As the first note rings out tomorrow night at the East Pyongyang Grand Theatre all eyes will turn to the best seat in the house and the million dollar question: will Kim Jong Il be sitting there when America's most famous orchestra strikes up the Star Spangled Banner?

The answer to that question could offer a vital clue to the mood of the world's most enigmatic dictator 18 months after his underground nuclear test.

But beyond the nuclear brinkmanship, Tuesday's groundbreaking concert in North Korea by the New York Philharmonic orchestra is already heavily charged with symbolism.

The visit marks the first significant cultural exchange between Washington and Pyongyang since fighting ended on the peninsula more than 50 years ago.

Britain is among a small group of nations that maintain diplomatic relations with the hermit kingdom, but the US has sent only a handful of top envoys to the regime since 1953. That the orchestra will be playing the North Korean and US national anthems would have been virtually unthinkable a year ago.

But as diplomats struggle to defuse the persistent crisis of North Korea's nuclear weapons programme — and Mr Kim's heel-dragging worsens — the musical outing has been condemned by critics as “wonderful propaganda” for the reclusive regime and its inscrutable “Dear Leader”.

North Korea will seize on the concert as a double public relations victory, said Brian Myers, an expert on Pyongyang propaganda. “The outside world will be presented with the idea that this is a misunderstood country that is keen to engage the rest of the world. The domestic audience will be told that this is about the US paying tribute to Kim Jong Il.”

Professor Myers added that Pyongyang's media was likely to focus particularly on recent comments by Lorin Maazel, the musical director of the tour, who suggested that the US should examine its own record on human rights before being “judgmental about the errors made by others”.

The orchestra's repertoire, which will include An American in Paris by George Gershwin and the New World Symphony by Dvorak, has been chosen to hint at the benefits of turning one's eyes to the outside world. The organisers of the trip believe that it stands a chance of deepening the average North Korean's understanding of Americans — a people vilified by the Pyongyang propaganda machine as the ultimate force of malevolence.

On the eve of the orchestra's departure Zahrin Mehta, the president of the New York Philharmonic, described the mission of bringing “great music” to a nation with notoriously little contact with the outside world. There is even a hope that the visit could play the same role as the “ping-pong diplomacy” whereby table tennis players were sent to play ice-breaking tournaments in Beijing, with which the US softened relations in the 1970s.

There is, however, very little chance, argue veteran Pyongyang watchers, that “sing-song diplomacy” will succeed where the talks on Pyongyang's nuclear disarmament have, so far, stalled. Although the talks produced an apparent breakthrough last year, the North has now missed a deadline where it was to provide a full account of its nuclear programmes.

The US representative at the talks, the Assistant Secretary of State, Christopher Hill, has emerged as a keen supporter of the concert as a way of demonstrating that Washington is not — as the North Korean media relentlessly suggest to their audiences — about to attack.

“Sometimes the North Koreans don't like our words; maybe they'll like our music,” he said last week.

Making friends

— US ping-pong players were the first officially invited Americans to set foot in Communist China for two decades when they toured the country in 1971

— A series of ice hockey games between Canada and the USSR in 1972 warmed relations between the two states and led to regular exhibition matches between Canadian and Russian clubs

— China has made diplomatic capital out of pandas since the Tang dynasty when a pair of the animals were given to the Japanese royal household. Chairman Mao gave Richard Nixon a pair of pandas after his state visit in 1972

Source: Times archive

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