UNC maintained communication lines with N. Korea throughout 2020

Information exchanged between two sides despite year of turbulence and tensions

The “pink telephone” the UNC uses to communicate with North Korea. (UNC Facebook page)

While reviewing what was an extremely eventful year, the UN Command (UNC) revealed it had maintained its line of communication with the North Korean military at all times, even amidst extreme tensions with the North.

“The UNC maintained its line-of-communication with [its North Korean military] counterparts throughout the year. Through the storied ‘pink phone,’ we passed 86 messages and conducted twice-daily line checks for timely and effective information exchange,” the UNC said in a 2020 review posted to its official Facebook page on Dec. 31.

The post was accompanied by photographs of a soldier contacting North Korea on the phone and of the pink telephone itself, a push-button device of the kind still in use at some American military bases in South Korea.

A compilation of key Facebook posts by the UNC.

On June 9, 2019, North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) announced that the North would be shutting down lines of communication with South Korea amid a sharp dispute over propaganda leaflets that defector groups were launching into the North via balloons.

“The South Korean authorities connived at the hostile acts against the DPRK [North Korea] by the riff-raff, while trying to dodge heavy responsibility with nasty excuses. This has driven [. . .] inter-Korean relations into a catastrophe,” the KCNA said in the announcement.

“Accordingly, the relevant field of our side will completely cut off and shut down the liaison line between the authorities of the North and the South, which has been maintained through the North-South joint liaison office, the East and West Seas communication lines between the militaries of the North and the South, the inter-Korean trial communication line and the hotline between the office building of the Central Committee of the [Workers’ Party of Korea] and the [Blue House] from 12:00 on June 9, 2020.”

But despite that development, the UNC’s line of communication with the North was apparently maintained throughout the year.

The UNC also listed other projects it had worked on during 2020. These projects included recovering the remains of soldiers killed in the Korean War, granting access to the demilitarized zone (DMZ), monitoring the border with North Korea, striving to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and cooperating with a DMZ fact-finding survey carried out by the South Korean government.

By Gil Yun-hyung, staff reporter

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