SEOUL, Sept. 25 (UPI) -- South Korea and North Korea have opened a military hotline across the world's last Cold War frontier for the first time since the end of the Korean War five decades ago, officials said Wednesday.
The hotline, which links the liaison offices of the armies, is aimed at avoiding accidental conflicts as soldiers from the two sides work to remove landmines in the heavily fortified Demilitarization Zone that divides the two Korean states.
The two countries are simultaneously conducting demining operations at each side of the 2.5-mile wide buffer zone that runs 155 miles, dividing the peninsula. More than a million mines are believed to be planted in the no man's land, including some 3,000 in the area where the railway is being rebuilt.
Under a landmark project to reconnect cross-border railways and roads, the two countries signed a military accord last week to ensure the safety of soldiers working in the dangerous border area.
Establishing the military hotline was a key point in the agreement, which is the first official document directly involving the military authorities of the Cold War rivals. As part of a safety plan, soldiers from the two sides alternate working to clear the landmines from their respective areas.
Testing was carried out Tuesday before the hotline officially began operations on Wednesday, a Defense Ministry official told United Press International on condition of anonymity.
A pair of direct lines, one for telephone and the other for facsimile transmission, was set up between both sides across the western part of the border, the official said.
Another hotline that runs along the eastern route is expected to be set up in November after the militaries from the two sides finish clearing landmines in the buffer zone for another cross-border railway on the east coast, he said.
"The hotline will always be ready for operation so that both sides can discuss mine removal work and avoid accidental conflicts," Col. Kim Jong-chan, chief of the ministry's public relations department, told journalists.
The first inter-Korean military hotline is seen as a major breakthrough in confidence-building efforts by the rival armies. The two countries technically remain in a state of war as the 1950-53 Korean War ended without a peace treaty. Their tightly sealed border is the world's last Cold War frontier, with nearly 2 million troops on both sides.
The railway, a symbolic project for inter-Korean reconciliation, will reconnect the two Koreas' capitals and proceed on to Sinuiju, North Korea's newly established Kong-style economic zone. It could eventually link up to China, Mongolia and eventually to Russia's trans-Siberian railway.
