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Sung Kim, who leads the U.S. State Department's office of Korean affairs, is due to arrive in Pyongyang Thursday to explore why North Korea has stalled the denuclearization process.
It would be the first official contact between the two countries since North Korea failed to meet a year-end deadline to provide a full account of its nuclear programs promised under the aid-for-disablement deal reached during six-nation talks in February last year.
North Korea was supposed to have finished disabling its main plutonium-producing facilities and detailing all of its atomic programs by Dec. 31 last year in the second phase of the nuclear deal with the United States, China, Russia, Japan, and South Korea.
The North completed the first phase of the accord in July by shutting down the Yongbyon reactor, which produced weapons-grade plutonium, in return for 150,000 tons of fuel oil aid from South Korea and the United States.
The North also began disabling the reactor, fuel reprocessing plants and a fuel fabrication plant under the supervision of U.S. inspectors in November. It should have finished the process and declared all of its nuclear programs to complete the second phase. The third and final phase is the dismantling of its nuclear programs.
Kim, who arrived in Seoul ahead of his Pyongyang trip, said he would seek to advance the denuclearization process, spending two or three days in the North. The envoy vowed to press the North to give a "complete and correct" declaration of its nuclear programs "as quick as possible."
"We'll try to make some progress," Kim told reporters upon flying into a Seoul airport. Kim also met South Korean officials to coordinate their messages to North Korea. "They had useful consultations on the pending issue of the six-way talks," Seoul's Foreign Ministry spokesman said, declining to disclose details.
But diplomatic sources in Seoul said Kim's visit would be focused on the North's suspected highly enriched uranium weapons program. Ministry officials also said Pyongyang's denial of a uranium enrichment program is the biggest issue hindering the nuclear deal. The North says it submitted a nuclear list in November, but the United States insists it must account fully for a suspected uranium weapons program.
"The requirement is for a complete and correct declaration of all of its nuclear programs," Kim told reporters, before leaving for Beijing on Wednesday to meet Chinese officials to discuss ways to break the nuclear deadlock before enter North Korea.
China, the North's only remaining communist ally, is considered one of few nations that have leverage over the defiant leadership in Pyongyang. In keeping with hopes that Beijing can move the disarmament process forward, Chinese Communist Party envoy Wang Jiarui has been visiting North Korea since Tuesday.
Wang, head of the International Liaison Department of the Communist Party Central Committee, held talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il on Wednesday "in a warm and friendly atmosphere," Pyongyang's state-run Korean Central News Agency said. The North's news media did not provide details of the meeting.
In February 2005, Wang visited North Korea and met Kim, which helped ease the nuclear crisis that had worsened following Pyongyang's declaration that it possessed nuclear weapons. He again visited North Korea in October 2005, accompanying President Hu Jintao on his visit.
Although Wang has not been directly involved in the six-nation negotiations, he met with Christopher Hill, the chief U.S. envoy to the nuclear talks, when he visited China earlier this month.
Chinese Foreign Ministry described Wang's trip as "a normal exchange," noting patience should be shown toward North Korea.
In a move that could further boost the diplomatic drive, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice may visit North Korea next month when she travels to Seoul to attend the Feb. 25 inauguration ceremony of South Korea's President-elect Lee Myung-bak.
"There is a possibility that Rice visits North Korea during her Asia tour next month," a diplomatic source said.
During her possible visit to the North, she may attend a concert by the New York Philharmonic, which is to play in Pyongyang on Feb. 26, in what has been compared to U.S. orchestral visits to the Soviet Union in the 1950s and so-called "ping pong" diplomacy with China in the 1970s, he said.
Rice has left the door open to a visit to North Korea if it meets certain conditions, saying the "United States doesn't have permanent enemies."
