Philharmonic’s North Korea Visit Is Diplomatic Triumph

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The New York Sun

SEOUL, South Korea — America and South Korea have scored a diplomatic triumph with the agreement that the New York Philharmonic will go to North Korea in February, the first major cultural contact between the U.S. and North Korea.

The visit is a significant dividend of the diplomacy of Ambassador Christopher Hill, the U.S. nuclear envoy who spent three days in Pyongyang last week during which he delivered a letter to North Korea’s leader from President Bush asking Kim Jong Il to disclose the contents of his entire nuclear program by the end of the year, as agreed.

The visit was welcomed — but with reservations — by American officials alternately encouraged and disappointed in negotiations to get North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons.

“If this can be an icebreaker, this can be a welcome step,” a U.S. envoy on the North Korean human rights issue, Jay Lefkowitz, said.

“Change in the character of the North Korea regime is going to have to come from within,” Mr. Lefkowitz said. “The first step toward any kind of change is allowing the North Korean people to experience the outside, the outside world.”

While in Pyongyang, according to sources in Seoul, Mr. Hill obtained formal confirmation that North Korea would indeed invite the New York Philharmonic, as was discussed when the Philharmonic’s president, Zarin Mehta, and the orchestra’s public relations director, Eric Latzky, made a trip to Pyongyang in October.

Mr. Hill was a prime figure in working out the initial trip and then in following through during his recent mission, which began with a stopover here on the way to Beijing and then Pyongyang. He discussed the idea with South Korea’s foreign minister, Song Min Soon, and nuclear envoy, Chun Yung Woo.

The primary topic of their talks was the letter Mr. Hill helped to draft for Mr. Bush’s signature, but he and South Korean officials also reviewed a wide range of other ways to encourage rapprochement and eventually diplomatic relations between America and North Korea as well as a peace treaty formally ending the Korean War.

When he arrived in Pyongyang, Mr. Hill focused on the letter in meetings with North Korea’s nuclear envoy, Kim Kye Gwan, and then turned to the idea of the Philharmonic’s visit.

The trip received a major boost from the Korea Society, whose chairman, Donald Gregg, and president, Evans Revere, both former senior diplomats with wide experience here, have long been advocates of negotiations and reconciliation between America and North Korea.

Mr. Revere, a former deputy chief of the U.S. embassy in Seoul and a former deputy assistant secretary of state, reportedly was instrumental in working out transportation arrangements for the orchestra. The immediate plan is for entire orchestra to fly to this region on Asiana, the second largest Korean carrier after Korean Air. It is not clear, however, if Asiana will carry the entire orchestra — including instruments — directly to Pyongyang or if they will have to switch to North Korea’s Koryo Air for the flight to Pyongyang from Beijing, the route by which virtually all visitors go there.

Although the visit is viewed as evidence of warming relations between America and North Korea, it is also likely to be controversial.

“All this cultural exchange is fine,” a writer who has visited Pyongyang several times and now divides his time between Seoul and New York, Peter Hyun, said, “but I don’t understand why advanced countries advocate all these rights, democracy, and freedom of expression, and then want to cater to North Korea, which is probably the worst violator.”

Mr. Hyun, visiting Seoul, said he questioned who would really be able to listen to the orchestra in Pyongyang. “I don’t think ordinary people, including music lovers, will be allowed to attend,” he said.


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