LONDON -- I watched with dismay the recent pictures of U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright hobnobbing with Kim Jong Il, the communist dictator of North Korea. I admire Albright and guess that she was unhappy at having to be seen in such company. She was only doing her job and no doubt justified her actions to herself at least by arguing that it would all be worthwhile if her actions helped to wean North Korea from its nuclear and missile activities.

We must hope that her words were not only heard but also heeded by the North Korean leadership. Can they be persuaded to mend their ways? Don't count on it. It would be a serious mistake for U.S. President Bill Clinton, in the hope that a thaw with North Korea would provide a fitting end to his presidency, to visit North Korea without guarantees of progress on all the main issues between Washington and Pyonyang.

The North Korean regime remains a brutal communist dictatorship and reflects some of the worst features of the regimes of Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong. Despite food aid, the bulk of the North Korean people are malnourished and many are hungry. They are also oppressed by a ruthless police state. Children lack proper care and medical attention, and an orphanage visited by Albright was a show institution in no way representative of the squalid conditions that are reported to be the norm.