Lee and Xi are scheduled to hold their first summit talks Saturday on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in the southeastern city of Gyeongju.

The South Korean presidential office said denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula is on the agenda, Yonhap news agency reported.

North Korea’s Vice Foreign Minister Pak Myong-ho criticized South Korea for seeking to raise the denuclearization issue whenever an opportunity arises, according to the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

“We will show with patience that denuclearization is a ‘pipe dream’ which can never be realized even if it talks about it a thousand times,” Pak said in a statement carried by the KCNA.

He said South Korea still remains unaware that “struggling to deny the DPRK’s position as a nuclear weapons state and talking about its daydream of realizing the denuclearization just reveal its lack of common sense.”

DPRK is the acronym of North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

The North appears to protest the South Korean presidential office’s announcement on the denuclearization agenda, but it also seems to be expressing its discomfort to China over the issue ahead of the Lee-Xi summit.

In May last year, North Korea denounced South Korea for stating its commitment to denuclearization of the peninsula in a joint declaration issued after the trilateral summit among leaders of South Korea, China and Japan. The North rejected it as “wanton interference” in North Korea’s internal affairs.”

MA/PR