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The rail project is one of several collaborative projects that South Korea has championed to develop closer ties with the North and demonstrate the economic benefits the country could gain from giving up its nuclear weapons.

Whether any significant engineering work can take place will depend on progress in ridding the North of its nuclear arms. International sanctions imposed on the North over its weapons program forbid the kind of significant investment from the South that such infrastructure work would entail.

Washington has insisted that South Korea refrain from joint economic projects with the North until the country takes important steps toward denuclearization. The meeting Mr. Biegun will attend is expected to focus on ensuring that the inter-Korean project proceeds in a way that does not violate international sanctions.

The Trump administration enacted the travel ban on North Korea in September last year, after an American university student, Otto F. Warmbier, died as a result of brain damage suffered in a North Korean prison. Mr. Warmbier was arrested in 2016 while on a tour of Pyongyang.

The ban affected a dozen American nonprofit groups that work regularly in North Korea, although some aid workers have been able to get “special validation” to travel to the North, in the form of one-time-only passports issued by the State Department.

Washington has held fast to its policy of exerting “maximum” economic and diplomatic pressure on North Korea, even though President Trump has claimed progress in denuclearizing the North since meeting its leader, Kim Jong-un, in June in Singapore.

In the months following the Trump-Kim meeting, Washington has continued to crack down on companies, individuals and ships accused of engaging in banned activities like money laundering, cyberattacks and ship-to-ship transfers of fuel on North Korea’s behalf.