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In North Korea, Breaking a Barrier With Sound
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Indeed, these citizens rarely looked up from the old books, old journals and old computers that they appeared to be studying or using, no matter how many noisy Western reporters barged into their rooms and began making a sharp-elbowed ruckus.
It was a striking -- and seemingly staged -- display of scholarly discipline.
Until the New York Philharmonic flew into Pyongyang on Monday, the orchestra's most highly publicized performance in a closed society had occurred in 1959, when conductor Leonard Bernstein led a concert tour of the Soviet Union.
What the Soviet leadership did not anticipate was that the tour would become a "two-edge sword" for regime change, Maazel told reporters Tuesday. He said the 1959 tour started a gradual process of cultural and information exchange that helped lead to the eventual collapse of the Soviet system.
Before the concert, Maazel was asked if that might happen here.
"There are no parallels in history, there are only similarities," he replied. "The Soviet Union was a vast country, monolithic and a superpower. And from the United States' point of view, it was a global threat.
"The Korean Peninsula is a very small area geographically," he said. It has an "entirely different role to play in the course of human events. To draw a parallel would be to do a disservice to the people who are living here."
After the concert, Maazel sounded more hopeful and less guarded. He said "normalization" of relations between the United States and North Korea was now a possibility, although it might take two decades.
"Groundwork has been laid," he said. "There is no question about it."
