Our National Anthem in Their Capital
Focused as we have been on the big stories of Annapolis and the National Intelligence Estimate, we nearly missed a smaller, ugly story. The New York Philharmonic plans to visit North Korea in February and be feted by Kim Jong Il.
Focused as we have been on the big stories of Annapolis and the National Intelligence Estimate, we nearly missed a smaller, ugly story. The New York Philharmonic plans to visit North Korea in February and be feted by Kim Jong Il.
North Korea’s Fearless Leader invited the orchestra and the State Department jumped. “It would signal that North Korea is beginning to come out of its shell, which everyone understands is a long-term process,” said Christopher Hill, the chief U.S. negotiator in the Six Party Talks. “It does represent a shift in how they view us, and it’s the sort of shift that can be helpful as we go forward in nuclear weapons negotiations.”
Mr. Hill likened it to “Ping-Pong diplomacy.” Let’s review. Ping-Pong players had their moment in the sun because of social and political changes that had taken place in China following the Cultural Revolution. No one would mistake China, then or now, for a nice place, but Beijing had already curbed the worst of its own excesses, turned toward the world and was looking for partners. Chinese timing was fine with President Nixon.
Put aside, for a moment, Mr. Hill’s apparent belief that Mozart or Aaron Copland will encourage KJL to give up the nuclear weapons program he bankrupted, squeezed and starved the country to acquire. Put aside, for a moment, the whole entire nuclear issue. Nothing in North Korea’s behavior leads us to believe that it has decided to reform itself. Far from “Ping-Pong diplomacy,” this smacks of another attempt by the Administration to buy its legacy at the expense of morality and common sense.
The United States is prepared to ignore the enormous human tragedy that the North Korean gulag is for its people, while offering KJI a PR windfall. The orchestra says it is happy that it will be permitted to play our national anthem and the concert will be broadcast – so it isn’t just for the “elites.” Egad! Even those North Koreans with radios (we don’t think they’re prevalent in the slave labor camps) know only what their government wants them to know. Hearing our national anthem in their capital, imagine the commentary: “Look how powerful our Fearless Leader is – he didn’t give up one iota of control over North Korean policy (or nuclear capability), but the Americans are here anyhow and he graciously accepts their homage.” Translation: Americans are friends of KJL, not you, so don’t get any ideas about human rights or anything.
If music can be abused, it is an abuse of The Star Spangled Banner to serve the dictator over the people. One wag said, “Perhaps they could play Leonard Bernstein’s ‘Kaddish’ (the Jewish prayer for the dead) instead.”
Which raises the question about the members of the orchestra participating. How should they feel being be feted and fed in Pyongyang while people starve in the parts of the country the violinists won’t see? How can pianists, timpanists, cellists and French horn players stay in hotels, sleep between sheets, wash with soap, sit on furniture, ride on elevators and buy souvenirs without knowing which of those items may have been made by slave labor?
We recommend that before they go, the brass section read aloud Shin Dong-Hyok’s article, “Life in North Korea’s Gulag: I was forced to witness the execution of my mother and brother.” (Wall Street Journal, 11-30-07) At least they would travel with a perspective they won’t get while they’re there.