NORTH KOREA: NY orchestra to perform in Pyongyang
Updated
The famous strains of George Gershwin's An American in Paris are to be performed for the people of North Korea by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. It's the first performance by an American orchestra in North Korea and will be broadcast live throughout the country.
Presenter: Joanna McCarthy
Speakers: Head of the Korean Studies Centre at the ANU, Kenneth Wells
WELLS: Well, in some ways this is the first of its kind for a cultural artistic group of this kind of standing to go from America to North Korea. And I guess we'd probably best think of it in terms of a comprehensive kind of strategy. A lot of people talk about Korean society, politics, economics as being welded together under one system and so it's very holistic. And so you could say this is holistic diplomacy and it's part of the way too of breaking ice, putting a human face on what so far has been a very military and hard economic kind of diplomacy.
McCARTHY: So, if this is a grand gesture of goodwill and conciliation, do you think it will have any effect in thawing relations?
WELLS: On its own, it certainly won't have very much effect and its effect will be very dependent on other developments, particularly on the extent to which Christopher Hill from the United States can negotiate a reasonably fast full disclosure by North Korea of its past nuclear activities, its present nuclear facilities and its future nuclear objectives. And so even though this is a good human face to it, it will not have much effect if that kind of negotiation doesn't really bear fruit.
McCARTHY: Indeed, North Korean propaganda is still strongly anti-American, so why do you think they've allowed this visit?
WELLS: Well, North Korea allows things like this that often surprise people. It allowed, for example, oh many years ago now, a Billy Graham crusade at a time when it really was still suppressing any religious activity very firmly and people at the time thought why on earth are they allowing this and then there are all sorts of arguments about the earlier Christian background of Kim Il Sung, the founder and long leader of North Korea.
And I suppose in this case we could say that in artistic areas, North Korea has been quite keen on art, music, drama and so forth and so it probably does want to show to the world and to its own people that this is alive and advanced part of its own culture.
