U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's upcoming visit to North Korea is yet more evidence of Pyongyang's shift toward re-engagement with the international community for possible economic reasons, a U.S. expert said Monday.

Ban's scheduled visit to Pyongyang this week is expected to include a meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, a high-level U.N. source told Yonhap News Agency. The surprise visit has spurred hope Ban might broker progress in the North Korean nuclear standoff or inter-Korean relations.

"A visit by the U.N. secretary-general, if it were to occur, would provide further evidence following Liu Yunshan's October visit to Pyongyang of a shift by North Korea toward re-engagement with the international community under Kim Jong-un," said Scott Snyder, a senior researcher for Korea studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Liu, the fifth-ranked official of the Chinese Communist Party hierarchy, visited Pyongyang last month and attended celebrations of the 70th anniversary of the North's ruling Workers' Party in a possible indication of improving ties between the North and China.

"Re-engagement most probably has an economic motive," Snyder said.

American experts have noted that one of the top priorities for Kim Jong-un has been to revive the country's broken economy under his trademark "byeongjin" policy of simultaneously seeking nuclear and economic development. That compares with the "songun" or military-first policy that his father and late leader, Kim Jong-il, pursued.

When North Korea backed off and proposed peace talks with the South during the August military standoff, some experts also said Pyongyang could have started the confrontation to get inter-Korean talks started so as to win economic cooperation and investment necessary to rebuild its broken economy.

U.S. analysts have also said the North's leader needs economic assistance in order to consolidate his power and that's why the regime has been refraining from provocations. Unless Pyongyang gets what it wants, however, it could again resort to bad behavior, they said.

Indeed, the North neither conducted a nuclear test nor launched a long-range rocket around the Oct. 10 anniversary of the Workers'

Party despite widespread concerns that it would.

Bruce Klingner, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, also said that Pyongyang "typically uses engagement to either gain benefits or undermine international support for sanctions," adding that the North could use Ban's visit to push for a peace treaty with the U.S.

"Such effort (for a peace treaty) will not be successful, however, since both Washington and Seoul have rejected a peace treaty without steps to reduce North Korea's conventional threat to South Korea," he said.

Ban's meeting with the North's leader would be "significant" itself in that it would be Kim's first meeting with a major world figure, Klingner said.

"Hopefully Ban will use his visit to press Pyongyang to improve its human rights record and begin compliance with numerous U.N. resolutions," he said. "Ban should press Kim to open North Korea to inspections of its gulags and to begin denuclearization efforts as required by the UN resolutions."

Richard Bush, a senior researcher at the Brookings Institution, said that the North's leader appears to be "trying to extricate North Korea from the isolation that it created for itself the last two years" and inviting Ban is the latest example.

"But the important variable is the policies of North Korea, especially on nuclear issues and whether there is any evidence of a change. High-level meetings may reveal that a change is underway, but for enduring engagement and improvement of relations, it is North Korea that will have to change," he said. (Yonhap)