South Korea patted itself on the back for de-escalating tensions with North Korea but also spoke of a diplomatic “standstill” on Wednesday in an annual white paper on the state of inter-Korean relations.

The paper, released by the Ministry of Unification, showed a 16-fold drop in border crossings from South Korean nationals between 2019 and 2020. The majority of these individuals crossed the border because they worked at the inter-Korean liaison office that North Korea blew up in June 2020, and the paper also showed a significant drop in government spending for cooperative projects with the DPRK last year.

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