SEUL Apr 9 DPRK for unknown reason For the third day, he has not returned calls from Seoul over the military line, which were usually made twice a day, the Yonhap News Agency reported.
Earlier, the Ministry of Unification of South Korea reported that on Friday morning, the daily call through the line of the inter-Korean liaison office was also not made. The South Korean side confirmed the absence of problems on its part.
According to the agency, North Korea has not responded to military calls for the third day. The inter-Korean communication line operates only on weekdays, while the military also calls on weekends. The two countries usually call twice a day at 9:00 am and 4:00 pm, but on Sunday, the DPRK again did not respond to attempts to contact it.
Relations between the DPRK and South Korea have become more tense recently amid the US and South Korea holding large-scale military exercises for the first time in several years.
On Saturday morning, North Korean state media reported on the test of a Haeil-2 strike-type underwater unmanned system with a simulated nuclear warhead. A number of comments were also published condemning the teachings of South Korea and the United States, Washington's military cooperation with other countries within the framework of AUKUS.
Daily contacts through inter-Korean communication channels have been interrupted several times before. Last June, Pyongyang stopped answering calls due to technical glitches caused by the rainy season. In the summer of 2020, the DPRK, in protest against South Korean activists sending leaflets critical of Pyongyang to the DPRK, announced a complete severance of all lines of communication with the South, including military channels and a special line between the top leadership of the two countries. On June 16, the North blew up the inter-Korean coordination office in the Kaesong industrial complex. About a year later, North Korea restored inter-Korean communication channels in July 2021. Communication was again interrupted in August of the same year and later restored in October at the direction of the leader of the DPRK, Kim Jong-un.