Hours before South Korea and China were set to hold their first summit, North Korea sought to set the tone by dismissing any discussion of its denuclearisation as a “pipe dream”.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and South Korean President Lee Jae-myung are scheduled to hold their first face-to-face talks on Saturday on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in the southeastern city of Gyeongju.
Seoul has said it hopes to raise the issue of North Korea’s denuclearisation during the meeting.
On Saturday, North Korea’s Vice Foreign Minister Pak Myong-ho condemned the South for seeking to raise the topic whenever an opportunity arose.
“Denuclearisation is a ‘pipe dream’ which can never be realised even if it talks about it a thousand times,” Pak said in a statement carried by state media Korean Central News Agency.
South Korea still remained unaware that “struggling to deny the DPRK’s position as a nuclear weapons state and talking about its daydream of realising the denuclearisation just reveals its lack of common sense,” he added, using North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
