Seoul, South Korea ? International efforts to shut down North Korea’s nuclear program took a surprise turn Thursday when the United States altered course, sending a key American official to Pyongyang for direct talks with the communist country.

Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, Washington’s chief nuclear envoy to North Korea, was the highest-level U.S. official to visit the North Korean capital since October 2002.

The Bush administration initially preferred to meet the North with regional powers like China and Japan at the talks. But the U.S. has been moving away from that limitation, having meetings on the sidelines of summits and sending White House adviser Victor Cha to Pyongyang earlier this year. Hill’s trip is the clearest indication yet of reaching out directly.

The visit, coming before North Korea makes good on its promise to shut down its nuclear reactor, appeared to demonstrate how much the Bush administration wants to achieve a breakthrough in the effort to dismantle the Pyongyang regime’s atomic weapons program.

“We hope that we can make up for some of the time that we lost this spring, and so I’m looking forward to good discussions about that,” said Hill, who went to Pyongyang after several days of discussions with officials in China, Japan and South Korea.

“We want to get the six-party process moving,” Hill said in footage shot by APTN in Pyongyang. He referred to talks involving North and South Korea, China, Japan, Russia and the U.S. aimed at securing North Korea’s denuclearization in exchange for economic and energy aid for the impoverished state.

Hill was to meet with Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan, North Korea’s lead negotiator in the six-nation talks, the State Department said. He planned to return to South Korea today.

U.S. officials had previously rejected one-on-one diplomacy to avoid delivering North Korea a perk it sought, which indicates Hill’s trip is a vote of confidence in Pyongyang’s sincerity about keeping its promises under the six-nation deal.