North Korea is stepping up criticism of South Korea’s new President Lee Jae Myung as he prepares for his first summit with U.S President Donald Trump, calling Lee’s efforts to engage with Pyongyang a “pipedream”.
Since taking office in a snap election in June, the liberal Lee has taken steps to lower tensions with the nuclear-armed North, and the issue is one where he is expected to find common ground with Trump, who still boasts of his historic summits with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. But North Korea’s envoys have yet to accept any of Trump’s latest letters, and Kim’s powerful sister, Kim Yo Jong, has issued a steady stream of dismissive statements rejecting and ridiculing Lee’s overtures. “Lee Jae Myung is not the sort of man who will change the course of history,” she told a gathering of North Korean diplomats, state news agency KCNA reported on Wednesday. She called South Korea a “faithful dog” of Washington, accused Lee of speaking gibberish, and said his government maintains a “stinky confrontational nature…swathed in a wrapper of peace”. Kim said the Lee administration is pursuing a two-faced policy of engagement as well as threatening joint military drills with the United States, which bases around 28,500 troops in South Korea as a legacy of the 1950-1953 Korean War. Leader Kim Jong Un has ordered his diplomats to take “preemptive counteraction” against enemy states, the KCNA report said, without providing details. In response to her statement, South Korea’s presidential office said the administration would open a new era for joint growth with North Korea, and its recent measures were meant for the stability and prosperity of both Koreas.
South Korea and its ally the United States kicked off joint military drills this week, including testing an upgraded response to heightened North Korean nuclear threats.

Full report : North Korea dismisses South Korean president’s ‘gibberish’ ahead of US summit.