By Jung Sung-ki
Staff Reporter
The militaries of South and North Korea Wednesday successfully exchanged calls during test trials of a new 24-hour telephone hotline for avoiding accidental armed clashes in the West Sea, the Defense Ministry said.
The calls between the two sides on the hotline were made in accordance with an agreement struck at a working-level meeting on July 20 to establish liaison offices on either side of western border to avert military conflicts. The hotline officially starts Saturday.
At 10:10 a.m., the South’s military officers at a liaison office at Dorasan Railway Station near the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) made a call to the Northern side near the city of Kaesong first, and the North responded to the call, ministry officials said. The two sides also conducted a test run of the fax line.
``It is the first direct communications linkage between the two militaries,’’ Col. Kim Lag-jung at the ministry’s public affairs office said, adding the telephone lines were connected along the reconnected cross-border Kyongui Railway.
The cross-border communication offices will be operated around the clock with two regular calls a day to cope with any emergency in the western border of skies, seas as well as cross-border roads and railways.
At general-level military talks in June last year, the two Koreas agreed on a set of tension-reducing measures, including the establishment a hotline and sharing of a radio frequency between the two navies.
The two sides also agreed to dismantle propaganda facilities on both sides of the inter-Korean border in three phases.
Pyongyang, however, refused to heed the agreements a month after Seoul accused Northern ships of violating the sea border.
In July last year, a South Korean ship fired warning shots after a North Korean vessel entered South Korea’s territorial waters. The Navy later said that the North Korean side made radio contact but the message was inaudible.
The Northern Limit Line (NLL) is a controversial sea border of the two sides in the West Sea, or Yellow Sea. Seoul views the NLL as the de facto border line. But Pyongyang denies it, claiming the U.S.-led United Nations Command unilaterally decided it after the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty.
A series of naval clashes over the years in the rich fishing grounds of the West Sea have caused scores of casualties on both sides. The latest naval clash between the two sides in 2000 left six South Korean Naval personnel dead.
The two Koreas are scheduled to meet tomorrow at the truce village of Panmunjom to set the date and the agenda for a third round of inter-Korean general-level talks, which have been stalled for more than a year.
gallantjung@koreatimes.co.kr
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