The North shut down the line last May after South Korea announced reprisals for what it said was a North Korean torpedo attack on a warship.

Despite South Korea rejection to hold talks with its neighbor, North Korea on Wednesday opened a cross-border Red Cross hotline.

A spokeswoman for Seoul's unification ministry official said that liaison officials of the two countries made their first contact in nearly eight months on the hotline at the border truce village of Panmunjom.

The North shut down the line, which was long used as an official communications channel, last May after South Korea announced reprisals for what it said was a North Korean torpedo attack on a warship. The North denied involvement in the sinking, which killed 46 sailors.

Spokeswoman Lee Jong-Joo told AFP the ministry does not see the re-opening of cross-border liaison work as representing an improvement in relations. "Our position is clear," she said.
Lee said the North this week also sent a series of proposals for contacts with South Korean civic and religious groups.
"Instead of making proposals to civilian groups... we urge North Korea once again to show true sincerity for improved relations," she said.

Following the Southern ship attack, tensions between the two neighbors rose further in November when the North bombarded a South Korean border island, killing four people including civilians.

In a change of tack this year, the Pyongyang regime has been calling for dialogue, expressing willingness to return to the talks that it abandoned in April 2009, a month before staging a second nuclear test.

The South rejected the latest offer of dialogue, insisting the North must at any talks admit responsibility for provocations and confirm a commitment to scrapping its nuclear program.