North, South Korea restore cross-border hotline

North and South Korea restored their cross-border hotline on Monday, a step that Seoul said could help improve relations after Pyongyang sparked global concern with a string of missile tests in recent weeks.
The two sides resumed communications with officials exchanging their first phone call since August, days after the UN Security Council held an emergency meeting over the North Korean missile tests.
The two Koreas had signaled a surprise thaw in relations in late July by announcing the resumption of cross-border communications, severed more than a year earlier, but the detente was short-lived, as Pyongyang stopped answering calls just two weeks later.
Seoul's unification ministry confirmed the phone call on Monday morning between officials from the two rivals.
"It's been a while and I'm very happy that the communication line has been restored," a South Korean official told his northern counterpart in footage provided to reporters by the ministry.
The South's defense ministry also confirmed that cross-border military communications have resumed.
"With the restoration of the South-North communication line, the government evaluates that a foundation for recovering inter-Korean relations has been provided," the unification ministry said in a statement.
"The government hopes... to swiftly resume dialogue and begin practical discussions for recovering inter-Korean relations."
Earlier on Monday, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un had "expressed the intention of restoring the cut-off north-south communication lines", North Korea's official news agency KCNA said. 
It reported that the move was an attempt to establish "lasting peace" on the Korean peninsula.
But an analyst played down Monday's restoration as a "symbolic" gesture, noting the North's recent missile launches.
"Even if this leads to talks, we may enter a new phase where North Korea engages in dialogue but continues to carry out provocations simultaneously," said Park Won-gon, a professor of North Korean Studies at Ewha Womans University.
North Korea had unilaterally cut off all official military and political communication links in June last year over activists sending anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the border.