Telephone services in Pyongyang have been broken down since Monday, disrupting activities and communications of foreign embassies and organizations in the DPRK capital, an Itar-Tass correspondent said Wednesday.

According to Stanislav Varivoda, who is based in Pyongyang, the activities of many foreign organizations there have been paralyzed as a result of the telephone service breakdown.

However, international calls between Pyongyang and other countries continued unimpeded, he said. Since Monday, foreigners have been able to call only foreign diplomatic missions in Pyongyang, he said.

Presumably, the city authorities have not cut off service altogether, but only blocked the telephone numbers given to foreigners, he added.

There are two telephone exchanges in Pyongyang. One provides telephone services exclusively within city boundaries, while the other has an outlet to the world. The two are not connected, and it is impossible to make a call from one to the other without operator help.

The Itar-Tass reporter said repairs are going ahead, and the telephone exchange is expected to be normalized on Wednesday. He speculated that the ongoing service breakdown appears to have been caused by technical problems rather than from political motives.

At present, foreigners are resorting to cell phones for local communications. At the end of May, all mobile telephones were confiscated from Pyongyang residents.

Source: Yonhap