'A Big Adventure'

Other handy tips on navigating the East-West divide. Tipping is considered rude. The Tuesday concert will have no intermission and will start at 6 p.m., the usual start time for entertainment events in North Korea. Our personal cellphones will be collected at Beijing airport before takeoff, and returned after departure from Pyongyang. We're supposed to wear warm shoes for our flight because the floor of the Pyongyang airport arrival hall is like ice.

Another big—and still unanswered—question is whether North Korea's secretive leader Kim Jong Il might attend the Tuesday concert. The North Korean media is revealing little. The state-run Korean Central News Agency confirmed that the New York Philharmonic will perform only last Friday, even though the trip was announced in the United States in mid-December. The wire-agency article went on to praise the East Pyongyang Grand Theater, where the performance will take place, as "an edifice of culture … Perfect are the harp-shaped walls of the seating hall, the stage and latest sound facilities."

Kim reportedly has taken a keen personal interest in the event. But the protocol-conscious autocrat may not show unless high-level U.S. officials are also there. (Pyongyang has authorized Western VIPs–including some retired U.S. government officials—who are attending the Monday inauguration in Seoul of South Korean President Lee Myung-bak to cross the DMZ and travel to Pyongyang for the concert.)  U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Assistant Secretary Hill are slated to attend Lee's inauguration in Seoul, but Hill has thrown cold water on rumors that they might pop up at the concert, too. For one thing, Pyongyang's dismantling of its nuclear program has been stalemated, so a high-level U.S. official visit may seem inappropriate.

In a briefing in Washington before her departure for Asia, Rice she acknowledged it was "a good thing" for the North Korean people "to have some access to the outside" with an event such as the orchestra visit. But she cautioned, "The North Korean regime is still the North Korean regime … I don't think we should get carried away with what listening to Dvorak is going to do in North Korea."

The orchestra has chosen to perform music that is American to the core, including Antonin Dvorak's Symphony No. 9, "From the New World," which was written while the Czech composer was in the U.S., as well as George Gershwin's "An American in Paris." The program also includes the Act III prelude to Wagner's "Lohengrin," the traditional Korean folk song "Arirang" and "The Star-Spangled Banner"—the performance of which was a prerequisite for orchestra to make the trip. For a regime that still occasionally refers to the United States as a "warmonger"—and which recently called retiring Cuban leader Fidel Castro its "closest comrade-in-arms [who] triumphantly advanced the socialist cause in Cuba despite the U.S. persistent sanctions and blockade"—the cultural overture is a breakthrough.  Maybe even Kim Jong Il will find it's music to his ears.

© 2008