North Korea closed its southern border Friday for the third time in recent days, even as it told Seoul it would restore a military communications hot line severed last week, South Korean officials said, according to AP. The North Korean military cut the communications line on March 9 to protest Seoul's decision to hold 12 days of joint military exercises with U.S. troops across South Korea at a time of heightened tension on the peninsula. Washington and Seoul call the war games routine defense drills; Pyongyang accused the two nations' militaries of preparing to attack the North. The drills ended Friday. The North said it would reconnect the hot line at 8 a.m. Saturday morning, Unification Ministry spokeswoman Lee Jong-joo said. «We will again restore the North-South military communications,» said a message faxed to South Korean border officials, according to Lee. The hot line is the only means of quick communication left between the two Koreas and is vital for coordinating the passage of people and goods across their border _ one of the most heavily fortified in the world. The two countries technically remain at war because their three-year conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty, in 1953.
