For one memorable night, Pyongyang became
a city of music and hospitality in place of
ideology and hostility. For one brief night, the
abstract language of music trumped the affected
language of diplomacy, as harmony and bonhomie
blanketed the everyday reality of Cold War-era
animosity. For one historic night, the soothing
power of music offered a glimpse of camaraderie,
as the gracious North Korean hosts revealed the
softer side of their hardened Korean Workers'
Party.
That was over two years ago, on
August 23, 2005. "This is the most precious day of
my musical career. Music is feeling. Seeing the
audience moved by my music I felt that North
Koreans and South Koreans are one and the same -
for music touches the heart," intoned South Korean
mega pop star Cho Yong-pil, following his two-hour
concert at Pyongyang's Ryukyong Chung
Ju
Young Stadium.
Since that momentous
musical contact between the two Koreas, what has
transpired on the political front has been
something short of transporting. A
denuclearization accord was signed the very next
month by North Korea, along with South Korea, the
United States, China, Japan and Russia.
Just hours later, North Korea came out
with new demands for light-water reactors,
effectively pouring cold water over the pristine
agreement. Next year, as Americans were
celebrating their July 4 holiday, North Korea sent
its own idiosyncratic congratulatory message with
a seven-rocket salute into the skies above the
East Sea.
Three months later, on October
9, Pyongyang conducted its very first nuclear
test. A new and more detailed agreement was signed
by the six nations on February 13, 2007. Since
then, the denuclearization negotiations have
stalled, with some progress in between, insofar as
one step forward and two steps back can be called
such: last autumn, as North Korea was shutting
down its main nuclear reactor in Yongbyon, new and
serious allegations arose of its nuclear
proliferation to Syria.
The fruits of
nuclear negotiations with North Korea, a moving
musical interlude notwithstanding, have been
unfulfilled expectations, new and growing
suspicions, and a veritable nuclear North Korea.
Or, so it seemed, until news broke that
the New York Philharmonic would play in Pyongyang
on February 26. The world's media fawned over the
spectacle, a visit to the isolated kingdom by
America's oldest and most famous orchestra. The
infamously isolated state was opening its doors to
the biggest contingent of Americans since the
unhappy days of the Korean War in the early 1950s,
the world's leading media gushed with glee.
As the date of the performance approached,
expectations rose to fevered pitch, as
well-wishers predicted the unprecedented cultural
contact between North Korea and the United States
would be nothing short of an epoch-making event.
Comparisons were happily made to
"ping-pong diplomacy" between China and the US in
1971. That year, in April, American table tennis
players were granted the opportunity to play in
China for the first time. That unprecedented event
took place on the eve of national security adviser
Henry Kissinger's secret visit to Beijing in July.
Surely, the two extraordinary events must
be married by cause and effect, so went the common
belief. Hazy recollections of sensational news
from over three decades past prompted many to draw
the conclusion that sports and goodwill must have
paved the way for president Richard Nixon's visit
to China in February 1972.
The New York
Philharmonic, its sponsors, and the American media
in unison called for a repeat of such a diplomatic
"breakthrough" - this time in Pyongyang through
"sing-song diplomacy". The great, timeless music
of Wagner, Dvorak and Gershwin played by a great
American orchestra in the heart of the enemy
nation would melt the hearts of the North Korean
elites and public alike. At the very least, the
performance would provide a welcome respite to the
long-suffering, starving, oppressed North Korean
people. After all, North Korea had even agreed to
broadcast the concert live on television
throughout the land.
Just who actually
watches live orchestral music on TV, in affluent
America or electricity-short North Korea, was
never raised.
Soon after the concert was
over, the crescendo of hope and warm feelings fell
into an apprehensible diminuendo. White House
spokeswoman Dana Perino struck a different,
cacophonous, chord, when she divulged to the
world, "The president thinks that, at the end of
the day, this is a concert. It's not necessarily
going to change the behavior of a regime that has
not been as forthcoming as we need them to be on
their nuclear activities."
She may have
also added that neither music nor sports is likely
to change the behavior of a regime that imprisons
some 1% of its population in political prisoner
concentration camps. She may have pointed out that
a one-night publicity stunt is not necessarily
going to civilize a regime that has throughout its
60 years of existence committed systematic and
widespread attacks on its civilian population,
including murder, extermination, enslavement,
torture, enforced sexual slavery and disappearance
of people - in short, crimes against humanity.
But what about the residual effects of
warmth and brotherhood, clearly evident in the
American performers and the North Korean audience
in East Pyongyang Grand Theater the night of the
concert? Following the historic performance, Lorin
Maazel, the orchestra's music director, remarked
that "in the world of music, all men and women are
brothers and sisters". He added, "If [the concert]
does come to be seen in retrospect as a historical
moment, we will all be very proud."
Will
the musical event be remembered 30 years hence as
a diplomatic "breakthrough", in the same way that
ping-pong diplomacy is today?
Quite
possibly, if future generations like to slur
causality as much as the present and choose to
find answers in atmospherics instead of politics.
The goodwill triggered by ping-pong matches
between Chinese and Americans in 1971 had as
little relevance to the actual Sino-US
rapprochement then as the rosy recollections of
the atmospherics do today.
In reality,
secret contacts between Washington and Beijing had
already been underway since September 1970 to
discuss geopolitical issues of mutual concern:
containing the Soviet threat, the war in
Indochina, China's place in the world, and Taiwan.
Likewise, the optimistic prognostications of
serenading Pyongyang will have no bearing on the
totalitarian state's behavior - in preventing the
regime's abuse of its civilian population or
buildup of its nuclear arsenal.
Quite to
the contrary, the New York Philharmonic's visit
may well have abetted just such regime behavior.
For several weeks, news of the sensational visit
managed to cast the North Korean regime in a
sympathetic light - as open to foreign cultural
intercourse - even as it was reneging on its
commitment to provide a complete accounting of all
its nuclear programs and continuing to kill and
torture its civilian population. More pointedly,
the fees paid to the North Korean regime by the
sponsors of the visit in all likelihood will be
used to abet and prolong just such tasks instead
of feeding North Korea's hungry, stunted
population.
A historic event it certainly
was, the South Korean pop star's concert in
Pyongyang in August 2005. And, so, a historic
cross-cultural event it shall be, the night that
the New York Philharmonic played - or was played -
in Pyongyang. The only question that will long
remain is just for whom it was historic: the
paying performers, the receiving regime, or the
suffering North Korean people?
Sung-Yoon Lee is
adjunct assistant professor of international
politics at The Fletcher School of Law and
Diplomacy, Tufts University, and associate in
research at the Korea Institute, Harvard
University. (This article was published in
Korean American Press out of Boston. Used with
permission.)
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