Pyongyang said that “the situation between north and south of Korea was not caused by the lack of communication lines or channels”.
DPRK has criticized the statement of UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres about Pyongyang’s recent decision to block all communication lines with South Korea in response to propaganda leaflets sent by the South Korean side to the North. This was stated in a statement by a representative of the DPRK Foreign Ministry, published by the Korean Central Telegraph Agency (CTAK) on Thursday night.
“The UN Secretary-General, through his representative on June 10, expressed regret over the measures taken by the DPRK to completely disable the inter-Korean communication channels, stating that they are necessary to avoid misunderstandings and miscalculations”, – reads the statement. – “We express our surprise at such reckless remarks coming from the very heart of the United Nations, lacking in logic and showing a lack of basic knowledge about inter-Korean relations.”
As the DPRK Foreign Ministry representative noted, “the situation between North and South Korea was not caused by the lack of communication lines or channels.
Earlier Wednesday, at a briefing, official representative of Secretary General Stefan Djujarrik said that UN Secretary General António Guterres regrets the recent severance of contacts between Pyongyang and Seoul and calls on the US, DPRK and South Korea to resume negotiations on denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.
On June 9, DPRK blocked all communication lines with South Korea as a response to propaganda leaflets sent by the South Korean side to the North. In particular, all telephones in the permanent inter-Korean communications office were disconnected, including the communication channel between the military north and south, as well as the hotline of the two countries’ leadership connecting the building of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea and the residence of the President of the Republic of Korea.