Korean Rhapsody

News that the New York Philharmonic is mulling an offer to perform in North Korea had us remembering an earlier symphonic sojourn in Asia, back in August of 1984. Then, the orchestra had been scheduled to play in Kuala Lumpur, but wound up canceling its appearance when the anti-Semites who ran Malaysia asked the musicians not to play "Schelomo, A Hebrew Rhapsody" by Ernest Bloch.

It's hard to imagine the list of melodies that would be banned by Kim Jong Il, but certainly anything involving freedom, democracy, joy, peace, or Christianity would be out of the question, given the well-documented iron fist with which that tyrant rules from Pyongyang.

If some musical diplomacy between America and the Communist-run hermit kingdom is warranted, why not turn the tables? Rather than sending our musicians there, we'd recommend inviting their musicians to come here. And helping them to defect, hoping it would be the beginning of a mass exodus from North Korea of the sort that, when it came to East Germany, helped spell the end of communism in Europe.

New York City already has a thriving Korean-American community into which the immigrants could be easily integrated. And the refugee musicians from North Korea would no doubt provide vivid firsthand testimony of Kim's abuses, evidence that would help inform American policymakers who might otherwise be tempted to try to offer better relations to Kim in exchange for his renewed, and certain-to-be-broken, promises to refrain from pursuing nuclear weapons.