Terry Blain
FEBRUARY 2008
When an agreed ceasefire ended the Korean War in July 1953, a full and final peace settlement between North and South Korea was envisaged. It never happened. Instead, for the next half-century, the fragile armistice was constantly threatened by the ramping-up of military armament levels and the gradual intrusion of nuclear weapons into the equation. When, in October 2006, North Korea conducted its first nuclear test, prospects for a resolution of the North-South conflict seemed more remote than ever.
And yet behind the scenes a series of covert orchestral manoeuvres was happening. ‘We have just very recently received an inquiry about the possibility of the New York Philharmonic performing in Pyongyang,’ announced a spokesman for the orchestra in August 2007. The communication, though routed through an ‘independent representative’, came from the North Korean Ministry of Culture. ‘We will explore the possibility of this as we would any other invitation,’ the spokesman dryly noted.
It was, in many ways, an extraordinary development. For decades, the US had staunchly taken the South’s side in the ongoing Korean conflict, and no American cultural organisation had ever visited the North. But significant advances had been made in limiting North Korea’s nuclear activity, in exchange for fuel and economic assistance. Now the North was extending an olive branch of sorts to its long-time enemy, ostensibly in partial reciprocation.
Zarin Mehta, the New York Philharmonic’s president, was quick to scent the possibilities of the moment. ‘It would be kind of extraordinary for us to play there,’ he commented. ‘If this venture helps in furthering what’s been going on in the last couple of weeks in terms of the normalising of relationships, that would become a wonderful thing for the world.’
A mere three months later, the North Korea concert actually happened, as an extra date on the NY Phil’s preplanned tour of Taiwan and China. The venue was the 2,500-seat East Pyongyang Grand Theatre in the nation’s capital where, on 26 February 2008, an audience of ‘men in dark suits’ and ‘women in colorful high-waisted dresses’ gathered to watch the Philharmonic play, with ‘all of them,’ the New York Times reported, ‘wearing pins with the likeness of
