North Korea welcomes the New York Philharmonic

PYONGYANG, North Korea: Nearly six decades after U.S. troops were pushed back down to the 38th parallel in the Korean War, the New York Philharmonic and a delegation of 175 journalists, staff and patrons alighted Monday in the capital of this isolated state.

It was the largest contingent of Americans to appear here since the conflict ended in 1953. This time, they came bearing bows and basses rather than arms and armor. The brass will issue fanfares, not orders.

The orchestra came for a concert Tuesday at the East Pyongyang Grand Theater, where music of Gershwin, Dvorak and Wagner, not to mention the U.S. and North Korean national anthems, were to be broadcast live on state-run radio and television - an unheard-of circumstance for a populace screened by rigid government censorship from the rest of the world.

In a special gesture, the orchestra planned to play a folk song deeply resonant for all Koreans - "Arirang" - as an encore.

The U.S. government has kept its distance publicly from the event, but Bush administration officials have made no secret of their hope that the visit will nudge North Korea toward greater openness and improve relations as China, the United States, South Korea, Japan and Russia struggle to induce Pyongyang to end its nuclear weapons programs.

The diplomatic overtones of the concert were underscored by a trip in the region this week by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to discuss the efforts. Although Rice was in Seoul on Monday for the inauguration of the new South Korean president, Lee Myung Bak, she has said she has no plans to come to Pyongyang and sought to play down the performance as a diplomatic instrument.

Whatever the political results, the visit will take its place with other landmark orchestra journeys, like the Philadelphia Orchestra's tour of China in 1973 during the era of "Ping-Pong diplomacy" and the Boston Symphony's triumphant appearance in the Soviet Union in 1956.

The Philharmonic flew to Pyongyang on Flight OZ 1004, a charter of the South Korean company Asiana Airlines. All told, 280 people were aboard, with another 100, mostly television production workers, already on the ground. Networks around the world were to show the concert.

After a 70-minute flight from Beijing, the plane landed at Pyongyang airport at 3:45 p.m. local time.

Scores of men in dark coats, some in uniform, stood waiting for the chartered 747 as it taxied toward the terminal.

"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Pyongyang," the cabin attendant announced over the loudspeaker.

A light snow fell. After journalists poured down the steps from the plane and took up positions, the Philharmonic's music director, Lorin Maazel, followed them down with other top orchestra officials. As the orchestra musicians continued to spill out and the crowd of reporters grew, increasingly nervous North Korean officials pushed back the camera operators and journalists. The orchestra posed for photographers in front of the plane.

Interpreters with pink badges and guides with yellow badges began identifying small groups of journalists they would accompany.

"This is a big deal," said Markus Rhoten, the principal percussionist. "This is a very big deal."

Buses took the contingent into the city, passing through barren brown fields dusted with snow. More and more buildings appeared by the side of the road, but there were few cars. Some of the buildings seemed freshly painted. People were riding bikes, and there was one ox-cart hauling goods.

Closer to the city center, the buildings grew more massive. Huge paintings of the late Kim Il Sung, North Korea's founding leader and father of the current leader, Kim Jong Il, began appearing. The streets grew more crowded, as many workers were heading home. Photographers, unusually, were allowed to snap pictures freely from the bus.

However, North Korea does not allow cellphones from the outside, and the visitors - including some 80 journalists and other media representatives - had had to drop them into individual plastic bags and hand them over to Philharmonic officials.

After the plane landed, Philharmonic stagehands got to work unloading 12 tons of equipment from the hold. This included nine double basses, nine kettle drums, assorted cellos, violas, violins and brass and four large cases of music. The crates sat on pallets, wrapped in plastic and netting, and were loaded aboard climate-controlled trucks borrowed from sources in South Korea.

North Korea, with its highly centralized system and tight controls on the daily lives of its people, remains firmly in the grip of Kim Jong Il. He and his late father are the subjects of personality cults that require portraits in every home and their images on lapel pins on officials' jackets. Huge statues of the elder Kim dominate cities. The state operates what human rights experts say is a vast gulag of labor camps, many filled with the ideologically suspect and their families.

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