Wall Street Journal Video on the N.Y. Phil Visit
The reporter, Evan Ramstad, covers Korea regularly and does a good, balanced report in his narration.
Bonus points for anyone who can identify the background music.
Update: Keep pedalling! Their plane hasn’t taken off yet!
We were feted with multi-course dinners of salmon, crab gratin, lamb and pheasant. Our breakfast buffet was decorated with ice sculptures and included foods meant to cater to American palates.
OK, some of it was a little weird, like the banana and tomato sandwich. But the overall impression was that the North Koreans were trying hard to please and had the means to do so. Even if you were a cynical journalist, it was hard not to be impressed.
Wrong.
Within hours after our plane left, the lights went out. The cellphone kiosk closed down and the broadband was disconnected.
Pyongyang looked again like what it really is: the capital of the one of the world’s most desperately poor and dysfunctional countries. As is often the case, the best show was the city itself, which had been displayed to create an illusion of prosperity.
“As soon as you guys left, it was pitch dark again,” said Jean-Pierre de Margerie, country director of the United Nations World Food Program here and a resident of Pyongyang for the last 18 months. [L.A. Times, Barbara Demick]
The second-grader in me makes me jump at “extra points” [but just what are they?]. Why, it’s the second movement of Dvorak’s New World Symphony, played in reverse order (the melody from the second half of the 7-minute or so movement played first, then the “build-up” in the first half). I hope no one fell asleep at the NY Phil’s version on Feb 26. In fact, I bet North Korea is one of few places in the world where not a single person in the audience dozes off in the middle of a live classical music concert. Because, you know, you may never wake up again, especially if you fall asleep during one of the Dear Leader’s many great compositions.
Why didn’t anyone in the State Dept. advise Lorin Maazel to be courteous and play one of Kim Jong Il’s great works (Sea of Blood or Let’s Crush the American Imperialists) instead of Arirang?
You win the cookie!
“Sea of Blood.” Sounds like what you’d expect from some unpopular 13 year-old goth kid. Like Dylan Klebold, except with a whole country to massacre.
I watch those ladies and gentlemen (?) in the theatre and cannot avoid thinking that a possible Unification would bring us closer and closer to 80.000 brain-washed cold-hearted militarized arrogant ignorant high society puppets… wow
I need a cookie too.
Monday Greetings Joshua Stanton. Always heartening to see your diligent perspicacity helping to dissolve the cement in the masonry of the KFR thralldom. As you say, Mr. Ramstad’s piece is fair and balanced, as far as it goes, which is not beyond the confines of Pyongyang at most. What would he have observed in, say, Wonsan, Chongjin, or Hamhung, to mention nothing of more rural areas almost anywhere in northern Korea?
Eventually unsung efforts have their effect: I understand that the largest Christian congregation in Orange County, California is signing on to the mission of the Korean Church Coalition for Freedom in North Korea. If so, then our “Let My People Go!” bumper stickers urging passage of Korean refugees out of China “before the 2008 Olympics” will be sported by a great many, not just by Korean church members.