Bloomberg News reported Sunday that Germany is working to reopen North Korea channels to prevent the current situation from sliding to a war.
 
Bloomberg said that according to a senior German government official, Germany is keen to step in and offer its decades-old conduit to keep diplomatic efforts alive with the threat of a military showdown ratcheting up.
 
James Hoare, a former UK charge d’affaires in Pyongyang, told the news agency by phone that "it’s a dangerous, confrontational situation with a lot of firepower on both sides," referring to North Korea and the U.S.
 
The official said that "in those circumstances one would have thought that a responsible politician would be trying to calm it down.” 
 
He said “the fact that Germany maintained a presence after East Germany disappeared counts for something," pointing to the German embassy in Pyongyang and the North Korean embassy in Berlin. He said that “Germany is seen as perhaps a more independent actor than, for example, the UK." 
 
Germany forged diplomatic relations with North Korea in 2001 following the German unification in 1990.
 
Germany is one of the few remaining Western nations that still has an embassy in Pyongyang as well as a North Korean embassy in its capital. 

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