On Wednesday, diplomats from North Korea plan to visit Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico with an undisclosed agenda, a senior administration official said Tuesday. Like Mr. Clinton, Mr. Richardson has traveled to Pyongyang to negotiate the release of Americans held there, in his case in the mid-1990s.

The White House approved the visit, which the official said did not signal any movement toward the resumption of official talks with North Korea and the United States. But the meeting, which he said the North Koreans requested, comes on the heels of conciliatory gestures toward South Korea, and suggests a concerted effort on the part of the North.

Mr. Clinton steered clear of broader issues during his humanitarian mission, officials said. Indeed, he did not even ask to see Mr. Kim, requesting instead a meeting with “an appropriate official.” To help the former president in case something went awry, the White House recommended John Podesta, an adviser to both Mr. Clinton and President Obama, join his delegation.

And to ensure he would not leave empty-handed, Mr. Clinton asked that a member of his entourage meet with the journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, shortly after he landed to make sure they were safe, said a senior administration official, who had been briefed on the visit.

For all the billions of dollars a year that the United States spends on intelligence gathering about mysterious and unpredictable countries like North Korea, it took just 20 hours on the ground in Pyongyang by a former president to give the Obama administration its first detailed look into a nuclear-armed nation that looms as one of its greatest foreign threats.