The visit by Mr. James Kelly, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asian affairs, to Pyongyang yielded no breakthrough in relations between North Korea and the United States. Nonetheless, the two sides are talking and appear committed to a serious dialogue. The U.S., like Japan, should give North Korea a chance to prove that it is ready to normalize relations.

Mr. Kelly's trip to North Korea was the highest-ranking visit by a U.S. official in the Bush administration. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright went to Pyongyang in the final months of the Clinton administration, and a visit by President Bill Clinton himself was said to have been in the works. At the time, it seemed that a deal between the two countries was imminent particularly in regard to North Korea's development and sale of ballistic missiles but George W. Bush's victory in the 2000 presidential election closed off that avenue.

Mr. Bush came to power with a deep skepticism about the value of engagement with North Korea. He endorsed the "sunshine policy" of South Korean President Kim Dae Jung but his administration then spent the next five months reviewing U.S. policy toward Pyongyang. Although the review concluded by endorsing engagement and declared that the U.S. was willing "to talk anywhere, anytime, without preconditions," there was no progress. North Korea deserves the blame for this: It demanded that the Bush administration take up where Mr. Clinton had left off. Mr. Bush's labeling of the North Korean government as part of an "axis of evil" in his State of the Union address last January only deepened the wedge between the two countries.