NORTH Korea has rejected the prospect of denuclearising the Korean Peninsula, calling it a “pipe dream” that can never be realised, just hours before South Korean President Lee Jae Myung and Chinese President Xi Jinping were set to discuss the issue during their first bilateral summit.
Yonhap News Agency cited today that the two leaders are meeting on Saturday in the southeastern city of Gyeongju, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit.
According to Seoul’s presidential office, the denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula is among the key topics on the agenda.
In a statement carried by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), North Korea’s Vice Foreign Minister Pak Myong Ho criticised Seoul for “seeking to raise the denuclearisation issue whenever an opportunity arises.”
“We will show with patience that denuclearisation is a ‘pipe dream’ which can never be realised even if it is discussed a thousand times,” Pak said.
He added that South Korea “still remains unaware that struggling to deny the DPRK’s position as a nuclear weapons state and talking about its daydream of realising denuclearisation just reveals its lack of common sense.” DPRK refers to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the North’s official name.
Analysts said the remarks appeared to be both a rebuke of Seoul’s stance and a signal of Pyongyang’s discomfort with Beijing ahead of the Lee–Xi talks.
In May last year, Pyongyang also denounced Seoul’s reiteration of its commitment to denuclearisation in a joint declaration following a trilateral summit with China and Japan, labelling it “wanton interference” in its internal affairs. - November 1, 2025
