Beijing ? North Korea took two significant steps out of isolation Friday, reaching a surprise agreement to play host to a first-ever visit by Japan’s prime minister and concluding a deal with South Korea to reconnect a railroad and road severed by the Korean War.

Gestures of diplomacy by North Korea’s secretive and bellicose regime are rare, but after years in decline the government has become more willing and perhaps increasingly desperate to engage the outside world in exchange for food.

South Korean chief delegate Yoon Jin-shik, second from right, walks with his North Korean counterpart, Park Chang Nyon, after their talks at a Seoul hotel. North Korea agreed Friday to reconnect a severed cross-border railway with South Korea.

Detente with South Korea and Japan is crucial because the countries would represent the biggest potential sources of financial aid for North Korea, and any progress would make it easier for the United States to continue its tentative steps toward establishing a dialogue with Pyongyang.

Japan, which has never had diplomatic relations with North Korea, said that Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi would make a one-day trip Sept. 17 to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.

“I want to discuss directly with him the possibility of restarting efforts to normalize our relations,” Koizumi said. “If the leaders don’t talk, we can’t move forward even one step.”

A friendlier face

While the United States views North Korea as a threat because of its bellicose rhetoric, large military and aggressive export of ballistic-missile technology, Japan has felt itself menaced directly by North Korea, which makes its decision to hold direct talks all the more startling.

In 1998, North Korea test-fired a missile without warning that flew across Japan’s main island. Japan also has refused to move forward in talks because it suspects North Korean agents of having kidnapped 11 Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s to be used as language and culture teachers for spies.

North Korea has denied the allegation, but Japan has said it would not establish relations until the charges are resolved, making it unclear how far talks can proceed.

Koizumi said the kidnapping charges were a “serious issue” that would “certainly be a topic of discussion,” while North Korea has promised to continue to search for “missing persons.”

For its part, North Korea remains embittered by Japan’s harsh colonial rule over the Korean peninsula from 1910 to 1945 and it has demanded an apology and compensation, which Japan has shown no inclination to offer.

The stalemate with Japan, like its standoff with South Korea and the United States, held for decades. But since the disintegration of its main benefactor the Soviet Union North Korea has slid into economic crisis and slowly come around to the apparent conclusion that it needs to show a friendlier face if it wants to survive.

The Bush administration has been cautious about engagement, and the president branded North Korea part of an “axis of evil” with Iraq and Iran. But Washington also has begun to show a willingness to talk. That seems far more likely if Japan and South Korea move ahead.

Koizumi said Friday that he had “strong support” from Bush and South Korean President Kim Dae Jung to proceed.

“We hope this will be an important contribution to peace,” said chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda. Fukuda added that Tokyo viewed normalizing relations with North Korea as a “historical duty.”

Striking a deal

North Korea’s state-run media on Friday also announced Koizumi’s plans to meet with Kim.

“It is expected that his visit to Pyongyang will mark an important occasion in settling the issues between the two countries and normalizing bilateral relations,” the Korean Central News Agency quoted a Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying.

South Korea has spearheaded moves to coax North Korea out of its isolation. In 2000, the leaders of the two sides met in Pyongyang in a dramatic but isolated step toward reconciliation. Since then, North Korea has shown both sides, agreeing to several cooperative steps but also engaging in deadly gun battles at sea with South Korea.

On Friday, after much discussion, the two sides struck a deal that includes an agreement to relink a railway and road across the heavily fortified frontier that has separated the two sides since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War.

The two sides agreed to begin work on the project Sept. 18, the day after the Koizumi visit, as part of an economic aid package in which Seoul will build an industrial park in the North, study flood defenses and supply rice to the North.

North Korea’s short and spotty track record in diplomacy makes it impossible to judge how serious it is about negotiations and whether true reconciliation and unification with South Korea is possible.

What seems certain is that its choices are limited. North Korea’s economy has collapsed, and it cannot feed itself. As many as 1 million people have died of starvation and malnutrition since 1995.