I guess it shouldn’t be surprising nobody is answering the phone currently on the northern half of the Joint Security Area:

North Korean soldiers stood yards away glaring at their South Korean and American counterparts here Friday in a standoff about, of all things, access to the historic conference room on-site.

The silent confrontation was apparently nothing unusual — which is to say it was just another surreal moment in an area former President Bill Clinton called “the scariest place on earth.”

Despite recent threatening words and actions from North Korea, tours continued to roll through the DMZ on Friday morning, with U.S. Korean War veterans, a Japanese general and members of the rock bands Trapt and Default visiting the unusual tourist attraction in rapid succession.

“It’s like coming to Disney World, but Mickey Mouse has got a gun,” said Air Force Staff Sgt. Luis Martinez, whose job involves maintaining communications with the North Koreans at the DMZ.

The only problem, he said, is that no one has picked up the telephone across the Military Demarcation Line since March 10 — the longest the two sides have gone without talking at the DMZ since a system of almost-daily check-ins was established in 2007.

The North Koreans have also ignored messages that representatives from the United Nations Command Military Armistice Commission have delivered via bullhorn in recent weeks, he said. The messages usually deal with courtesy warnings about military maneuvers going on in the area, and the like.  [Stars & Stripes]

Read the rest, but something I noticed judging by the picture is that the standards of dress to visit the Joint Security Area have definitely changed.