VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

With the unsolved Covid-19 pandemic, South Korea is now faced with new threats from its closest neighbor, North Korea. The Pyongyang government has said it will break its communication ties with South Korea. The official North Korean news agency, the Korean Central News Agency, KCNA, reported that it began today, Tuesday 10 June local time.

According to KCNA, the Pyong Yang government's decision took the form of terminating all communication channels with South Korea. And the most important thing is the termination of direct telephone lines or hotlines between the leaders of the two countries. Termination of communication can be easily done because every incoming call from South Korea must go through a liaison office in the city of Kaesong on the North Korean border. The office was established by agreement of the two countries in 2018 as a result of a summit with the aim of reducing relations tension. Since then the two governments have been able to carry out communication twice a day.

As claimed by the Pyongyang government, the termination of communication was the first of a series of actions to be taken against South Korea. The North Korean government in this communication boycott calls the neighboring country, which people are actually of the same ancestors, as an enemy. The decision to cut off communications was carried out by North Korea because it was upset due to some air balloons flown from South Korea intended for the people of North Korea. They were   accompanied by some written messages, perhaps considered as propaganda, and sometimes also food. The goal is said to be to tempt the North Korean people to read the messages or take the food.

There is a possibility that some North Koreans would read the message secretly to fulfill their curiosity about the news of the outside world or know the situation of their relatives in South Korea. The North Korean Communist government forbids its people from contacting the outside world and hearing, seeing or knowing news reports from abroad.

For the people of North Korea, the Government's decision to break communication relations with South Korea is not very important, because it is very likely that they also did not hear the news. Especially, since they haven't been able to communicate with the outside world. However, the North Korean ruler's steps, in addition to showing his power, can certainly affect relations that have begun to exist with South Korea. Surely this will have an impact on the efforts of reconciliation between the two countries which are of the same people, but are separated due to the Korean war and differences in political ideology.