Fiber-optic cable links South and North

Beginning August 14, fiber-optic cables will link South and North Korea. The government announced today that the direct telephone lines will be substituted with fiber-optic cables between the South and North Korean liaison offices, when the Panmunjom liaison offices open next Monday. The cables were laid between South Korea¡¯s ¡°House of Peace¡± and North Korea¡¯s ¡°Unification Pavilion,¡± a distance of 1 km. With the fiber-optic network laid between Seoul and Pyongyang, a hotline will be established, helping to ease tensions and normalize inter-Korean relations. It will also be used as infrastructure for high-tech telecommunications, making data exchange possible.

Three hundred telephone lines, one TV line (45 mega bps, capable of sending a one and a half hour movie in 30 seconds) and five data communication lines (text, sounds and images) can be used with the new fiber-optic cables.