Seoul–Pyongyang hotline
direct communication system between South Korea and North Korea
The Seoul–Pyongyang hotline, also known as the inter-Korean hotline, is a series of over 40 telephone lines that connect North and South Korea. Most of them run through the Panmunjom Joint Security Area (JSA) within the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and are maintained by the Red Cross.
Configuration
The border hotline in the Panmunjom area has terminals located in the Freedom House at the South Korean side and in the Panmungak building at the North Korean side. The terminals consist of a computer screen with red and green telephone handsets.
In total, there are 33 telecommunication lines between North and South Korea that run through Panmunjom. Five of them are used for daily communications, 21 for negotiations between the two countries, two for handling air traffic, two for sea transport and three for economic co-operation.
Additionally, there are 15 telephone lines which run outside Panmunjom because of geographical reasons. These include lines between military authorities and for the inter-Korean railroad between Dorasan Station in the South and Panmun Station in the North.
History
The first hotline was established in September 1971 to allow the North and South Korean Red Crosses to negotiate. Further lines were agreed to, in principle, at the 4 July 1972 Joint Communiqué between the two states and began operation on 18 August 1972.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7451637. The first chronological checks are 1971 and 1972.
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This entry incorporates text from “Seoul–Pyongyang hotline” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.