Albright to Visit North Korea, Meet With Kim

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright agreed Wednesday to travel to North Korea for a visit with leader Kim Jong Il, the first time such a high-ranking U.S. official has ever visited the isolated communist nation.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the trip would be “soon,” although no date had been fixed.

Albright made the announcement in a speech to a dinner hosted by Cho Myong Nok, the first vice chairman of North Korea’s National Defense Commission, who was on the second day of a visit to Washington.

In her speech, Albright said she planned to discuss “serious issues and matters of mutual concern” in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital. She gave no other details.

Cho’s visit was the first by a high-ranking North Korean official to the United States. He conferred Tuesday with President Clinton and met Wednesday with Albright and Defense Secretary William S. Cohen.

Albright has made no secret of her wish to visit North Korea, a nation just breaking out of half a century of self-imposed isolation from the world. Some members of Congress and former Defense Secretary William J. Perry have visited Pyongyang, but no Cabinet official has ever made the trip while in office.

The warming trend in U.S.-North Korean relations followed a historic visit to Pyongyang earlier this year by South Korean President Kim Dae Jung, the first summit meeting between the two states that were carved out of the Korean peninsula at the end of World War II.

North Korea remains on the State Department’s list of countries that support terrorism, although U.S. officials say the regime has not been directly implicated in a terrorist act for years. Pyongyang earlier demanded that it be removed from the list, saying that only then could relations with Washington be improved. However, Cho’s invitation to Albright hurdled that barrier.

Department officials have suggested that North Korea may soon be removed from the terrorism list.