President Moon’s Peace Initiative Meets North Korean Reality

It is pretty clear that the Kim regime is just putting pressure on the Moon administration to see how much concessions they can extract out of him:

North Korea’s decision to sever all official communication channels with South Korea is further weighing on President Moon Jae-in, who was already frustrated by Pyongyang’s lack of response to his inter-Korean peace initiative.

Experts advise Seoul to take a “timeout” from repeatedly offering something to engage the Kim Jong-un regime, while bracing for any possible fallout from increasing tension on the Korean Peninsula.

On Tuesday, the North cut off all cross-border communication lines, including the hotline between Moon and Kim, due to its apparent anger over the South’s “failure” to prevent North Korean defectors and activists from sending anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the border tethered to balloons. In addition, the North said “the work toward the South should thoroughly turn into the one against an enemy.”

At the start of the year, the Moon administration emphasized the importance of inter-Korean exchanges and cooperation. In March, the President offered cross-border healthcare cooperation and made another proposal last month to deal with inter-Korean projects that could be carried out separately from the North’s denuclearization negotiations with the United States. 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but what does the Kim regime have to lose by playing hard to get? They know the Moon administration will bend over backwards to accommodate them thus they will keep the pressure on them to maximize concessions.