Kim Jong-un breaks dialogue with South Korea: Withdrew his representatives from the inter-Korean contact office

North Korea on Friday withdrew its representatives from the Inter-Korean Liaison Office, in a new move that signals a deterioration in dialogue between Pyongyang and the international community after the failure of the Hanoi summit.

Kim Jong-un's government informed the south of the withdrawal of its staff, saying its action was "direct instructions from the higher authority"according to a statement issued by the Ministry of Southern Unification, responsible for relations with the neighboring country.

Seoul "regrets the decision of the North to withdraw from the Liaison Office and urges the North to return soon so that the South-North Liaison Office can continue to function as agreed by both sides," the note added.

The two countries, technically still at war, inaugurated this office last September on the basis of what was agreed in April at the first of the three summits that the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-unand South Korean President Moon Jae-in, maintained in 2018.

The rapprochement between the two neighboring countries last year has reached historic highs, but negotiations between the United States and North Korea on denuclearization seem to leave inter-Korean relations neutral.

At the recent Hanoi summit between Kim and US President Donald Trump, both parties have shown profound differences in their approach to the disarmament process.

The disagreement was about the number of badets in the North Korean nuclear program to be dismantled and the amount of international sanctions imposed on Pyonyang that Washington would mitigate as a "corresponding measure".

The fact that the sanctions imposed on North Korea have not been lifted also prevents progress in inter-Korean economic cooperation projects, whose revenues are vital to the coffers of the North Korean regime.

Since the missed encounter, it has been detected activity in various North Korean facilities, some of them would have been dedicated to the projectile mounting facility, which has increased speculation about a possible launch.

The works of the Sanumdong factory, located in Ryongsong district in Pyongyang, were documented by photographs showing a concentration of vehicles in front of the badembly center as well as a parked train and cranes erected in the neighboring center. charge, used to carry projectiles and components.

The images seem to confirm what the director of the South Korean National Intelligence Service, Suh Hoon, told a group of parliamentarians: the return of missile tests from North Korea, provocations that raise the tension with the south.