By Jon Herskovitz
Jon Herskovitz has been chief correspondent for Reuters inSouth Korea for three years. He has served as an Asian affairscorrespondent for Reuters based in New York and as a reporterin Tokyo, and ran the Dallas bureau before heading to Korea. Hehas travelled to parts of the North three times but made hisfirst trip to Pyongyang when he joined media covering the NewYork Philharmonic orchestra's unprecedented concert in theNorth Korean capital last week.
PYONGYANG (Reuters) - In one concert hall, North Korea'selite opened their arms for the warmest embrace yet to peoplefrom their mortal enemy. In another, children sternly avoidedeye contact with visiting Americans.
Last week's unprecedented concert by the New YorkPhilharmonic in Pyongyang showed one of the world's mostisolated states can be far more open than imaginable. Butanother concert the next day put that display into perspective.
Reclusive North Korea rolled the dice by allowing in theNew York Philharmonic with the largest ever contingent of about80 Western journalists, including myself.
One question on everyone's minds was, why this opennessnow?
For years I have had to cover North Korea from the distanceof Seoul: reading its state news reports, watching its TV,speaking to refugees who left and to experts who have devotedtheir professional lives to trying to understand the place.
Pyongyang has interacted more internationally since a 2005agreement to abandon its contentious nuclear weapons programs,but that accord has become bogged down, and the country isalmost as hermetically sealed as it was at the end of the1950-53 Korean war.
So the official attitudes to visiting journalists were asurprise: when we came through the airport, they didn't evenrun us through customs and immigration -- although I am sureour bags were checked along the way.
They gave us unfettered broadband Internet access, did notblock us from taking pictures, and even allowed us to interviewpeople on the streets -- with minders and security agentshovering nearby.
Perhaps the visit was a compromise between those who wantto keep the country closed, and those who feel a littleengagement with the outside world can help its battered image.
The country's poverty is evident even in Pyongyang, wheresemi-opaque tape blocks views into mostly empty stores thatclose at nightfall, because there is not enough electricity tokeep them lit.
Yet neon propaganda signs illuminate the night sky. Asystem that keeps its leaders in power by closing out the worldand stamping out dissent is reflected in the countless facesthat bow to the pavement when foreigners pass.
"MADE IN FRENCH"
The group we met in Pyongyang was relatively worldly.
They had watched movies such as "The Pelican Brief" andseen South Korean TV dramas on DVDs smuggled in from China.They could name the candidates fighting for the U.S. DemocraticParty's presidential nomination, even though there has been noofficial news of it in the North.
They came to the concert clutching digital cameras andwearing suits purchased abroad -- or the best approximationthat a North Korean tailor could produce. The "Made in French"label in one man's jacket was a bit of a give-away.
"We are not as strange as everyone seems to think," saidone of the minders assigned to the foreign journalists.
I can't guess what the concert meant for most of the NorthKoreans in the crowd, but for one middle-aged man I spoke to itwas a joy.
Although he was fluent in English, he tried to keep histongue in check as much as possible.
But he couldn't contain his excitement, or keep his feetfrom tapping, when he heard Gershwin's "An American in Paris".He said he had seen the movie once, many years ago.
"I have waited for something like this," he said. When Ilooked at him, I felt the 100-minute concert brought a brief asense of normalcy in one of the world's most bizarre countries.
DANCING WITH THE GENERALISSIMO
That feeling was dashed the next day.
Our bus convoy took us to the Mangyondae Schoolchildren'sPalace on the western edge of Pyongyang, a hulking structureadorned with garish cartoon murals, carpets of vibrant greenand displays of plastic flowers.
We were seated in the centre sector of a performance hall,surrounded by school children who gazed away from theforeigners, responding with silence to our "Hellos".
Children from an elite performing arts school took to thestage, singing and dancing with amazing skill and militaryprecision, fixed smiles on their faces.
A group of girls with starched white shirts sang a piececalled "Generalissimo Kim Il-sung Danced with Us": the groupprotects its leader and the leader is a parent to the countrywho protects the group, was the song's message.
When our group was ushered out, we left the unsmiling andstill-silent students in the audience to head for the airport.
On the flight back it was the memory of those faces I couldnot shake. But I also felt thankful to have shared aconnection, however brief, with the man who liked Gershwin.
(Jon blogged about his visit athttp://blogs.reuters.com/global/)
(Editing by Sonya Hepinstall and Sara Ledwith)
