New York Philharmonic Performs in North Korea

[7/4]

February 26, 2008

New York Philharmonic Performs in North Korea

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 12:41 p.m. ET

PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) -- The New York Philharmonic performed ''The Star-Spangled Banner'' and North Korea's anthem for Pyongyang's communist elite Tuesday -- a historic feat of musical diplomacy aimed at improving ties with the isolated nuclear power that considers the U.S. its mortal enemy.

The Philharmonic is the first major American cultural group to perform in the country and the largest delegation from the United States to visit its longtime foe.

The unprecedented concert, shown live on television inside North Korea, represents a warming in relations between the nations that remain technically at war and locked in negotiations over Pyongyang's nuclear weapons programs.

The country's tentative cultural ties to the West may be expanding. On Tuesday, a North Korean diplomat in London told The Associated Press that Pyongyang has invited rock guitarist Eric Clapton to perform. The diplomat, who did not give his name, confirmed reports in the British media that Clapton had been officially invited to Pyongyang -- the first such invitation to a Western rock star to the country.

With the U.S. and North Korean flags at opposite ends of the flowered bedecked stage, the Philharmonic began with ''Patriotic Song'' -- North Korea's national anthem, then played the U.S. anthem. The audience stood during both anthems and held their applause until the conclusion of the second.

''My colleagues of the New York Philharmonic and I are very pleased to play in this fine hall,'' Philharmonic music director Lorin Maazel said in English. Then in Korean, he told the audience: ''Please have a good time.''

Other works included Dvorak's ''New World Symphony,'' written while the Czech composer lived in the United States and inspired by native American themes; Wagner's Prelude to Act 3 of ''Lohengrin''; and Gershwin's ''An American in Paris.''

''Someday a composer may write a work entitled 'Americans in Pyongyang,''' Maazel said in introducing the Gershwin, drawing warm applause.

When the concert ended with a final encore of the traditional Korean folk song ''Arirang'' -- beloved in both the North and South -- the orchestra received a five-minute standing ovation, with many audience members cheering, whistling and waving to the beaming musicians.

''There may be a mission accomplished here. We may have been instrumental in opening a little door,'' Maazel said after the concert.

North Koreans in attendance -- men in suits and women in colorful traditional Korean dresses -- fixed their eyes at the stage. Many wore badges with a portrait of Kim Il Sung, father of current leader Kim Jong Il. Kim was not in the 2,500-seat East Pyongyang Grand Theater.

Ri Gun, North Korea's deputy nuclear negotiator, sat next to former U.S. Defense Secretary William Perry, who called the performance a ''historic moment'' and remembered how close the countries came to war in 1994 amid an earlier nuclear crisis.

''This might just have pushed us over the top,'' Perry said of the concert. ''I hope so. ... You cannot demonize people when you're sitting there listening to their music. You don't go to war with people unless you demonize them first.''

Traveling in China, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the North Korean people should have more opportunities to engage the world.

''It's a society that certainly needs ways to open up ... but it's a long way from playing that concert to changing the nature of the politics of North Korea, but I think it's a good thing,'' she said.

In Washington, the White House urged Pyongyang to live up to its agreement to end its nuclear weapons program. ''We need them to move faster on denuclearization. We need a full and accurate report from them. And we also need a report on all their proliferation activities,'' press secretary Dana Perino said.

The U.S. government has supported the Philharmonic's visit, agreed upon last year when efforts to end the North's nuclear weapons program were making unprecedented progress. The country shut down its main nuclear reactor in July and has started disabling it so it cannot easily be restarted under the eyes of U.S. and international experts.

However, disarmament has stalled this year because of what Washington says is the North's failure to give a full declaration of its atomic programs to be dismantled, as Pyongyang promised to do under an international agreement.

In a bid to show that it is complying with the disarmament accord, North Korea last week opened its main reactor to foreign media for the first time.

Before the concert, Maazel said the orchestra has been a force for change in the past, noting that its 1959 performance in the Soviet Union was part of that country's opening up to the outside world that eventually resulted in the downfall of the regime.

''The Soviets didn't realize that it was a two-edged sword, because by doing so they allowed people from outside the country to interact with their own people, and to have an influence,'' he told journalists in Pyongyang. ''It was so long-lasting that eventually the people in power found themselves out of power.''

When asked if he thought the same could happen in North Korea, he said: ''There are no parallels in history; there are similarities.''

Still, he said, the concert could spark other cultural and social exchanges.

''We are very humble. We are here to make music,'' he said.

Kim Cheol-woong, a North Korean pianist who defected to South Korea in 2002 because of the lack of musical freedom, said last week that regular citizens in the North were prohibited from listening to or playing foreign music produced after 1900.

On the streets of Pyongyang on Tuesday, North Koreans said they were aware of the orchestra's visit. But the trip was not front-page news: A picture of the orchestra's airport arrival was printed on page 4 of the main Rodong Sinmun newspaper, along with brief stories.

At the Grand People's Study House, the country's largest library said to include 30 million volumes, journalists saw North Koreans looking up information in an electronic catalog, reading industrial journals and attending language and science classes.

In one boisterous classroom, teacher Jeon Hyun Mi led students through an English lesson using materials from an American-designed program. Her students enthusiastically shouted out ''yes'' or ''no'' to her questions and gave brief replies.

The teacher said she welcomed the orchestra's visit as a way to bring the people of the two countries together, implying it was only the governments that harbored differences.

''We think we have good relations, people are very close,'' Jeon said. The trip ''is a gesture of improvement.''

Ri Myong Sop, an electrical engineering student walking outside a subway station, repeated the country's official line that the U.S. started the Korean War, which ended in a 1953 cease-fire that has never been replaced with a peace treaty.

''At present, if the United States takes the decision of a more encouraging policy toward the North then we can embrace the United States,'' he said.

Inside the concert hall, audience member Pak Chol said the concert was ''not only just an art performance.''

''I think the concert is just a wonderful gesture for greater understanding between the peoples of the U.S. and the DPRK,'' said Pak, using the initials for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the North's official name.

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PBS-TV's ''Great Performances'' will air the concert on Thursday night in most of the United States (check local listings). In New York, it will be broadcast Tuesday at 8 p.m. EST.

[7/4]

Five Myths, Direct From Pyongyang

What Not to Think About the Philharmonic Concert

By TERRY TEACHOUT

March 1, 2008; WSJ

Now that the New York Philharmonic has paid its

long-awaited visit to North Korea, the floodtide of justificatory gush

has begun. Lorin Maazel, the orchestra's music director, intoned that

"in the world of music, all men and women are brothers and sisters." A

South Korean newspaper described the trip as "an overture to peace

between the North and the United States." The Los Angeles Times called

it "a publicity coup for an institution . . . much in need of a lift."

And Eric Clapton says he's been invited to play in Pyongyang.

Eric Clapton?

Things are starting to get a little silly here. So

before any more 62-year-old rock stars decide to hop the next plane to

Pyongyang, allow me to point out five mistaken ideas about the

Philharmonic's concert:

- The fact that the audience responded warmly to the concert proves that it was a good idea.

"We just went out and did our thing," Mr. Maazel told reporters, "and

we began to feel this warmth coming back. . . . I think it's going to

do a great deal." Bunk. All it proves is that apparatchiks can be

sentimental, too, a fact that the Wagner-loving Adolf Hitler proved

long ago. Every North Korean who was permitted to attend that concert

was undoubtedly vetted by Kim Jong Il's secret police. No wonder they

wept when they heard the Philharmonic play their national anthem. End

of story.

- Any direct contact between North Korea and the U.S. is by definition desirable.

Not if it makes things worse for the North Koreans -- and it may. Kim

Cheol-woong, a musician who defected from Pyongyang to the West in

2001, warned the Journal's Melanie Kirkpatrick that "there will be

educational sessions . . . [on] the triumph of Kim Jong Il's political

leadership, which resulted in the fact that even the American artistic

group is coming to knock their foreheads on the floor in front of

General Kim."

- Even if only a handful of North Korean musicians heard the concert and found it inspiring, it was worth giving.

Really? Are musicians more important than "ordinary" North Koreans?

Remember that North Korea is a tightly shuttered society. All that its

people know about the concert is what Kim tells them. Will they see the

Philharmonic's visit as a beacon of hope, or proof that their Dear

Leader is so powerful that the Americans come running when he crooks

his little finger?

As for the handful of North Korean musicians who were

allowed to meet with the members of the Philharmonic, they did so under

the severest of constraints. A quartet of Americans led by Glenn

Dicterow, the orchestra's concertmaster, rehearsed the Mendelssohn

Octet with four young North Korean string players and found their

performance "attuned and sensitive." But Daniel J. Wakin reported in

the New York Times that they "exchanged few words" with their American

counterparts -- and that the moment the performance was over, "the

North Koreans quickly left the area. . . . At the end the four

Americans received bouquets, and Mr. Dicterow tried to hand his to the

North Korean next to him. The player refused it." If you're wondering

why, I suggest you read Alexander Solzhenitsyn's "The Gulag

Archipelago" to learn what happens to people under totalitarian rule

who make the deadly mistake of talking to foreign visitors.

- People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

So said Mr. Maazel in response to charges that the Philharmonic had

agreed to play for a monster who starves and jails his own people en

masse. "Is our reputation all that clean when it comes to prisoners and

the way they are treated?" he asked before leaving for Asia. "Have we

set an example that should be emulated all over the world? If we can

answer that question honestly, I think we can then stop being

judgmental about the errors made by others." In other words, the U.S.

is morally equivalent to a country thought to have imprisoned some

150,000 North Koreans in Soviet-style prison camps.

That notion is beneath contempt.

- Great art can change the world. As for Mr.

Clapton, he would do well to lend an ear to his fellow rocker Neil

Young. "I think that the time when music could change the world is

past," Mr. Young recently said. "I think it would be very naïve to

think that in this day and age." Indeed it would, but far too many

artists are just that naïve, not to mention vain (which makes one

wonder exactly why Mr. Young is joining with Bruce Springsteen in

contributing songs to the soundtrack album of the forthcoming antiwar

film "Body of War"). Clement Greenberg, the great art critic, called

such foolish folk "art-silly," going on to issue the following warning:

"Art solves nothing, either for the artist himself or for those who

receive his art." Least of all does it have the power to tear down the

high walls of tyranny -- or to feed the terror-stricken people of North

Korea.

Irene Breslau, a member of the Philharmonic's viola

section, got it right on the nose: "I've had a lot of moral

reservations based on wondering what a concert for the elite is going

to do to help the people starving in the street," she told the

Associated Press. Too bad Ms. Breslau's bosses didn't ask themselves

that question before sending her to Pyongyang.

Edited March 9, 2008 by 7/4

[Guy Berger]

I think those are all good questions when asking about an especially odious regime -- I'm just not sure the "cultural boycott" conclusion Teachout reaches is the correct one.