Pyongyang warns denuclearisation ‘a pipe dream’ ahead of Xi-Lee summit at Apec

North Korea pre-emptively slammed any discussion of its denuclearisation as a “pipe dream” just hours before Chinese President Xi Jinping was scheduled to meet South Korean President Lee Jae-myung on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit in Gyeongju, South Korea.

Analysts suggest Pyongyang’s blunt intervention was aimed at deterring both Seoul and Beijing from prioritising the explosive topic. This intervention was also seen as a show of “displeasure” that President Xi was holding a summit with President Lee in the South, one expert noted.

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.

Pak added that Seoul 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”, using North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

The statement’s timing was seen as a strategic pressure play.

“This statement is meant to prevent China and South Korea from discussing the denuclearisation issue as the most important topic at today’s summit,” Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies, told This Week in Asia.