Read The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History Online
Authors: Don Oberdorfer,Robert Carlin
__________
*
In her memoirs, former NSC adviser Condoleezza Rice says that regime change was prepared as one of three option papers advanced for the president’s consideration in late 2002. She calls it an “interesting idea” but dismisses it because “it would have had no support internationally and would have scared our already nervous allies even more.” Rice,
No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington
(Crown, 2011), 163.
*
To some extent, Roh’s problems stemmed from style rather than substance. In the words of one US official, Roh was like Mark Twain’s characterization of Wagner’s music—better than he sounded.
*
US ambassador to the ROK Alexander Vershbow, among others, criticizes Roh for making the right decision for the wrong reason, that is, wanting to use the offer of troops in order to obtain more American support for his efforts to engage North Korea. Roh later publicly characterized his decision to send the troops to Iraq as a “historical error.”
*
This attention to detail showed Pyongyang at its most punctilious. When it serves their interests, the North Koreans can be legalistic to a fault. As one observer has opined, whether they wear military uniforms or not, they are all lawyers and they “live in the loopholes.”
*
In fact, the North never told the United States any such thing during the Geneva talks in 1994 or at any other point that year.
*
The six-party talks had many fathers. The United States claims it came up with the idea, as do the Japanese, the Chinese, and possibly even the Russians. The North Koreans take no credit; they often complain that the forum was nothing but a gabfest.
*
For a full account, see Hecker, “A Return Trip to North Korea’s Yongbyon Nuclear Complex” (Center for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford University, November 20, 2010). Hecker notes that the North Koreans hustled the group through the facility. They said they had not wanted to show it to the visitors, but had been ordered to. Although the North Koreans would not explicitly say so, from their explanation of the design and components it seemed possible that the centrifuges were what are known as P-2s, a more advanced design capable of higher production rates.
*
Pictures of Gaddafi’s bloodied corpse in October 2011 no doubt further convinced Kim that he had made the right choice in not taking the Libyan route. Subsequently, Washington switched to suggesting that the North emulate Burma.
*
Hill also served briefly as US ambassador to the ROK in 2004.
*
The Clinton White House had repeatedly used waivers for North Korea, not because it wanted to, but to keep its North Korean policy intact. The point was moot for the Bush White House because John Bolton had already made clear in late 2001—a year before the Kelly visit to Pyongyang—that the administration would not ask for any more money for KEDO.
*
For many years until his retirement in 2009, General Ri was the North Korean military figure whom visiting American delegations usually met. He was the compleat America handler, able to switch from courtesy to sarcasm to angry threats as the occasion demanded.
*
This was also the vice president’s interpretation, and on this, at least, he may have been right.
J
UST PAST SIX IN
the evening of February 26, 2008, North Korean state television broadcast images of an orchestra playing the country’s national anthem. The scene might have been unremarkable were it not for the fact that the orchestra was the New York Philharmonic and the performance was coming live from the newly renovated East Pyongyang Grand Theater. What followed minutes later was even more stunning: the strains of “The Star-Spangled Banner” filled the hall and the international airwaves. Viewers in both parts of Korea watched as the camera panned across the audience, focused tightly on the American flag onstage and then, as the music reached its climax, pulled back dramatically for the anthem’s final notes.
The New York Philharmonic’s program that night—Wagner, Dvorak, Gershwin, Bizet, and Bernstein, and ending with a beautiful arrangement of the Korean folk song “Arirang”—lasted for an hour and a half. When it was over, there was polite applause, swelling into an ovation that went on for six long minutes. Near the end of the ovation, cheers broke out, with the audience waving at the orchestra, and orchestra members waving back. The smiles onstage were radiant, in marked contrast to the musicians’ reserved demeanor when they first took their places. The orchestra members, some with tears in their eyes, said later they were amazed; many avowed that the response to their performance was nothing like anything they had ever seen. In this of all places, it seemed, music had built a bridge.
North Korean television viewers may have missed the final cheers from the audience. The program schedule for that night called for coverage of the concert to last until 7:43
P.M
., at which point another program was to run—
Treasure House in Praise of Great Men: Visiting the International Friendship Exhibition Hall
, lasting until the regular news began at 8:00
P.M.
For a network, even in North Korea, a schedule is a schedule.
The path to Pyongyang had begun a half year earlier, in the summer of 2007, when the Philharmonic received a message that North Korea was interested in having the orchestra perform in its capital. That message had been preceded by a long series of hints, dropped at meetings on the nuclear issue with Ambassador Christopher Hill earlier in the year, that the North wanted cultural exchanges with the United States, including a visit by the New York Philharmonic. The first invitation arrived in August 2007; it did not come directly from Pyongyang, but rather from a businessman in Northern California, acting as an “authorized agent” of the North’s Ministry of Culture. That approach was quickly followed by a fax to the orchestra from the ministry itself.
The orchestra’s president, Zarin Mehta, and its director of communications, Eric Latzky, were intrigued both by an unsolicited fax from Pyongyang and by the prospect of a trip to North Korea. They quickly decided the idea was worth pursuing. The New York Philharmonic had performed all over the world, including in the Soviet Union in the coldest days of the Cold War, but there had been no opportunity recently for this sort of overseas trip to a politically hostile country. Not all the orchestra’s members were so convinced, however. Some of the musicians balked at “serenading a dictator,” and it took a long, spirited meeting with Mehta and Ambassador Hill to convince the doubters that this was a worthy enterprise.
As it turned out, the summer of 2007 was a good moment to launch such a venture. Six-party talks were making visible progress on the nuclear front. In July the North had shut down the Yongbyon complex again, and the IAEA had gone back to monitor the facility. By early August, the two Koreas had agreed on summit talks to be held later that month.
*
The State Department was quietly supportive of the proposal for the concert, and Ambassador Hill’s assistant, Yuri Kim, was assigned to ensure that things proceeded smoothly on the official level. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, an accomplished musician herself, saw the value of the enterprise, and may even have contemplated attending.
**
At what point North Korea’s Supreme Leader, Kim Jong Il, became aware of the proposal for the orchestra’s visit is not known, but if it had not already crossed his desk by August, it did not take long for word to reach him—and he clearly liked the idea. At an initial meeting with diplomats from the North’s UN Mission in New York to discuss the invitation, Zarin
Mehta noted that when performing abroad, the orchestra, in addition to the national anthem of the host country, always played “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The DPRK officials did not blink an eye—that would be fine, they said. From that point on, it was clear that Kim had given not only his blessing, but, more important, his full support. In the following months, the degree of cooperation the orchestra’s planning teams received on their visits leading up to the concert underlined that the event served a greater purpose for the regime than simply satisfying Kim’s well-known interest in the arts. In October the first advance team arrived in Pyongyang. Leaving the airport, the delegation assumed it was being driven to the same hotel where the orchestra would stay. Instead, the caravan—one aged black Mercedes followed by three white Volkswagen Rabbits—pulled up to an elaborate guesthouse on a hill overlooking the Taedong River, a place reserved for very important visitors.
In the days that followed, it seemed there was nothing the North Koreans would not do to make the orchestra’s visit a success. Whatever the orchestra wanted—and it had high standards for both its musicians and their instruments—the North Koreans were willing to supply. The venue initially offered for the concert was too small; the Koreans found a bigger one. The hall that was finally selected lacked an orchestra shell; the North Koreans built one. The food was not right for the orchestra members; the North Koreans asked what the musicians would prefer and were handed a picture of a buffet in a Paris hotel. The orchestra wanted the performance open to the public; the North Koreans agreed. The orchestra felt that it was important that students attend the performance; the North arranged to open the full dress rehearsal to students.
What must have looked to Pyongyang like a relatively simple affair quickly ballooned into something much more complicated. International media clamored to be included in the orchestra’s entourage. A German production company wanted the international rights to the broadcast of the performance. South Korean media wanted to take part in covering the event, as did American broadcasters and print media. They all demanded high-speed Internet and international phone connections from Pyongyang. The orchestra’s instruments also had demands. Because there were no heated facilities in the North Korean capital, special vans would have to be driven up across the DMZ from South Korea to store the instruments overnight. The North Koreans agreed to all of it. The last time anyone had seen such cooperation for an American delegation was in October 2000, when US secretary of state Madeleine Albright flew to Pyongyang.
The reason for this level of accommodation became clearer at a lunch with Vice Foreign Minister Kim Gye Gwan in October, during the first advance team’s stay in Pyongyang. When Zarin Mehta asked why the North Koreans wanted the orchestra to visit, Kim replied that they hoped
to improve relations with the United States in order to open up possibilities for developing their economy. “We’d like to supply Walmart,” he said.
*
The seemingly unlimited reservoir of cooperation dried up on one issue, however. Zarin Mehta told the North Koreans that the performance had to be broadcast live in order to reach as wide an audience as possible. This was not a request, he made clear; it was a requirement. The North Koreans demurred.
Communications have always been a sensitive issue with Pyongyang, and decisions about communications links with the outside world are not in the Ministry of Culture’s purview. Having the international media as part of the orchestra’s entourage was one thing; giving foreign newsmen access to real-time, uncensored broadcasting from the country was something else. Live broadcast was rare even for North Korean television, and to allow foreign television that right was not something the regime’s security organs could accept. When there was still no answer from Pyongyang about the broadcast issue in February as the orchestra began a tour of China prior to going to North Korea, Mehta told Eric Latzky, “Tell them if they don’t agree, we won’t come.” It was a monumental bluff. Canceling the Pyongyang concert would have been a disaster for the orchestra, but it would have been even worse for the North Korean officials, who knew they were under the gun to make this visit a success, no matter what. The answer came back: yes, a live transmission is approved.
Other logistical details, especially given the compressed time to work matters out, were also complex: obtaining a plane (South Korean carrier Asiana Airlines had one of the few special 747s in the world that could transport a group of three hundred people and the full load of the orchestra’s equipment), arranging passage across the DMZ for the special vans needed for the instruments, and getting approval for expedited immigration procedures for the orchestra members on their arrival at the North Korean airport. It was almost a miracle that everything came together.
Yet while Pyongyang pulled out all the stops to make the orchestra’s visit a success, Washington steadily distanced itself from the affair. Initial support in Washington for the visit, never widespread, dried up abruptly. The personal involvement of Assistant Secretary Hill, who looked to be leaning forward on the visit, ended unexpectedly and without explanation when he pulled out of a December press conference at which the orchestra
planned to make its official public announcement of the trip. The
Washington Post’
s Glenn Kessler later reported that Vice President Cheney’s office had applied the brakes after learning that Hill would stand on the stage with the North Korean UN ambassador at the event. According to Kessler’s account, Secretary of State Rice was “furious” with Hill and told him to back away from the orchestra’s arrangements. Hill’s staff assistant continued what the orchestra’s officials characterized as invaluable help, but the assistant secretary was thereafter nowhere to be seen in connection with the visit.
In an earlier meeting in 2007, Kim Gye Gwan had told Ambassador Hill that the North Koreans hoped Secretary of State Rice would attend the concert and suggested that if she did, Kim Jong Il would be there as well. In February, as the orchestra was making its final preparations, it heard rumors that an official US party—possibly including the secretary of state—would be in the audience in Pyongyang. The rumors, it turned out, were just that. The orchestra’s performance took place a day after the inauguration of the new ROK president, Lee Myung-bak, a high-profile event Rice had flown to Seoul to attend. Briefly meeting a former American official during the festivities, she waved away the upcoming performance in the North as unimportant. “It’s only a concert,” she said.