SEOUL, South Korea—North Korea has restored a communication hotline with the south after weeks of a hiatus in a small, fragile reconciliation step on Monday, despite the Kim regime continuing to conduct its missile tests. Liaison officials from the two Koreas exchanged messages over a cross-border communication channel on Monday morning, Seoul’s Unification Ministry said. The North is also expected to restore other communication channels running across the tense border later Monday. The phone and fax channels—which the liberal democratic South and the socialist North use to set up meetings, arrange border crossings and avoid accidental clashes—have been largely dormant for more than a year. In June last year, North Korea blew up a liaison office and unilaterally cut off all inter-Korean communication lines over anti-regime materials flown over by people in the South with balloons. Communications were briefly revived for about two weeks this summer, but the North later cut communications …