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Politics vs. Art: The New York Philharmonic in North Korea |
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Today, the New York Philharmonic completed its much anticipated concert in Pyongyang, North Korea. It was the first time so many outsiders had visited the isolated country. Though the trip was ostensibly apolitical, as usual, people on both sides of the demilitarized zone used the opportunity to push an agenda.
The New York Times, along with most media outlets, consistently pointed out North Korea’s shortcomings:
Outside, in real Pyongyang, where electricity is often scarce, most buildings were dark. Malnutrition persists in the countryside. Yet North Korea presented a lavish welcome on Monday to its latest visiting delegation, the New York Philharmonic: a gala performance of traditional music and dance, and an endless banquet with quail eggs, roast mutton and pheasant-ball soup.
Of course, they’re right. The North Korean regime is oppressive and totalitarian. It’s a cold war relic. But that anachronism persists on both sides, with Secretary Condoleezza Rice playing down the visit’s importance, even though the State Department helped organize the trip. Others, like Terry Teachout writing in the Wall Street Journal, were more explicit:
Eric Latzky, the Philharmonic’s director of communications, gave the game away when he made the following euphemism-clotted statement to the New York Times: “We went to Pyongyang and discovered a city that was clean and orderly and not without beauty, and had a kind of high level of culture and intelligence.” Note especially that last phrase: A kind of high level of culture. In fact, Pyongyang under Kim Jong Il, who has imposed a Stalin-style cult of personality on the country he rules, is widely reported to be exactly like London under Big Brother in George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” where “culture” existed solely to serve the state and its murderous purposes.
The simplistic us vs. them attitude that persists on both sides of this divide serves no one. If we ever hope for true dialogue with the North Korean people - and there are fitful signs of progress - we have to give up the idea that eliminating their society is our ultimate goal. Just as it is with the war on terror or the war on drugs, existential battles against an ideology are bound to run directly into shades of gray. Life just isn’t that simple.
When art is involved, the lines grow even hazier. Clearly, art is beyond the reach of totalitarian regimes. Art in its purest sense celebrates human possibility, and as such is antithetical to any control. Art is probably most related to anarchy in that sense, a search for radical truth. Vaclav Havel, Czech writer, dramatists, and eventual political leader once said:
There is only one art, whose sole criterion is the power, the authenticity, the revelatory insight, the courage and suggestiveness with which it seeks its truth. Thus, from the standpoint of the work and its worth it is irrelevant to which political ideas the artist as a citizen claims allegiance, which ideas he would like to serve with his work or whether he holds any such ideas at all.
Art utterly rejects the base instincts of modern politics, especially the unreasonable dichotomies forged during the Cold War. While diplomats and pundits at home and abroad were trying to bend the Philharmonic’s trip towards their own outdated ends, something beautiful happened under their noses:
As the New York Philharmonic played the opening notes of “Arirang,†a beloved Korean folk song, a murmur rippled through the audience. Many people perched forward in their seats.
The piccolo played a long, plaintive melody. Cymbals crashed, harp runs flew up, the violins soared. And tears began forming in the eyes of the staid audience, row upon row of men in dark suits, women in colorful high-waisted dresses called hanbok and all of them wearing pins with the likeness of Kim Il-sung, the nation’s founder.
And right there, the Philharmonic had them. The full-throated performance of a piece deeply resonant for both North and South Koreans ended the orchestra’s historic concert in this isolated nation on Tuesday in triumph.
The audience applauded for more than five minutes, and orchestra members, some of them crying, waved. People in the seats cheered and waved back, reluctant to let the visiting Americans leave.
This is about more than politics. This is about more than “sing song diplomacy.” If this trip is the beginning of a thaw in relations between North Korea and the West, good. But if not, that’s also good. This trip was, above all, about making music. It was about touching people’s lives. It was about bringing people - not politics - closer together.
I hope that when the players in the Philharmonic return home to New York, they remember the trip not for the historical moment they participated in but for the art they created. I hope they dream not of the horrors of Kim Jong-il’s totalitarian regime, but of the plaintive strains of Gershwin and Dvorak floating through the air, and of the tears on the cheeks of the human beings in attendance that night.
“we have to give up the idea that eliminating their society is our ultimate goal”
North Korean society? What society? Surely the goal should be to eliminate their supremely repressive *state*. When a state prohibits all several social interaction and mediates everything with force backed politically derived rules, there is no society to destroy, just a state. Eliminating the North Koreans *state* is a very worthwhile goal indeed.
The North Korean state is for all intents and purposes the North Korean society. I agree with you that the state is repressive, but if our goal is to eliminate it entirely, we’re going to run into strong resistance from the people that we need to work with, all of whom are involved in the North Korean state.
Don’t you concede that there is an acceptable goal to be had between wiping the slate clean in North Korea and what it is now? Would more openness, trade, and less repressive policies be a great step?
Of course there will be strong resistance, just as any organised criminal group resists being eliminated
But yes, it is a tough decision: does trade and cultural interaction moderate a repressive regime or does it legitimise it and actually subsidise repression? Perhaps it does a bit of both. Does that make it okay then as there may be some upside? No I do not think it does. Am I sure? No, I’m not but that is my inclination.
I have discussed this issue many times regarding China too (which although small beer in the repression sweepstakes compared to the North Koreans, they are plenty repressive too), but there are no easy answers. In China’s case, generally shunning them economically is simply not an option but that does not make companies like Cisco any less vile for actively and directly collaborating in Chinese repression. So perhaps just some trade is, by its actual nature, morally reprehensible where as others are less so.
But undermining a repressive regime whenever *possible* (and there is a term for which the devil is in the details) is surely better than just accepting them as normal members of the political community and averting our eyes from the fact North Korea is an open air prison. If I was really convinced dealing with them on a less adversarial basis actually would do long term good for people who are *not* the North Korean nomenklatura, I would be much less uneasy. I hope you are right and that it is a positive step, but I have my doubts. I’ll be delighted if I am wrong.
I honestly don’t know if it is a positive step, but I like your moderated view. Certainly, things in North Korea are unacceptable. But in my mind, simply refusing to deal with them in any way never leads to progress. In fact, our isolation of North Korea (not to be confused with their isolation of themselves) drove them towards nuclear capability. When they were confronted, we found out all they really wanted was trade, aid, and respect.
Of course, they have to earn some of that. But, I’d rather open them up slowly than drive them to nuclear options of last resort to get our attention. That’s where I feel these black and white dichotomies lead.
“Then they were confronted, we found out all they really wanted was trade, aid, and respect.”
A good argument can be made that people *should* trade with them, because that more or less forces them to be competitive and modernise, with all that implies, if they actually expect anyone to buy anything from them. It is not hard to see a plausible scenario in which trade could motivate improved domestic behaviour. I would argue that trade has really been the *only* successful motivator for improved Chinese behaviour towards its own people. So sure, trade could indeed be an incentive for progress. In fact that logic might also be applied to Cuba as clearly isolation has just given the nasty thugs who run that place an ongoing excuse for their economic failures (which is in truth preposterous as much of the rest of the world has few qualms about trading with Cuba for the few worthwhile products they produce… but since when has truth ever gotten in the way of politics, eh?). Maybe if the USA has not provided such an effective boogieman for Castro all these years…
But aid on the other hand just encourages more ghastly policies because it de-couples policy from consequences. Why change a failed policy if someone else is willing to mitigate the downside? Aid is quite literally a subsidy for repression.
Respect, well that is one thing above all that no one who values people as individuals must ever ever ever give such a regime. Upon what basis should they be respected? Their sheer persistence as tyrants? That vast grandiose half finished ‘pyramid’ in Pyongyang (which does look cool, it must be said)? Their vast military spending whilst people starve? Hell no.
I agree with most of this, but I do think aid can be beneficial. Nobody said aid wouldn’t be tied to anything. It would and should be. In fact, it already is. The oil we gave North Korea was dependent on their participating in nuclear talks.
Still, as you say, trade is a far better option.