THE GALA performance of the New York Philharmonic in North Korea this week revived memories of Leonard Bernstein's 1959 concert in Moscow with the same orchestra, and there was some merit to the comparison. True, the Cold War has long since ended. Nevertheless, the United States and North Korea's Asian neighbors are engaged in delicate negotiations with the last Stalinist regime on earth. These talks are meant to end with complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, a formal peace treaty ending the Korean war of the early 1950s, and normalized relations between Pyongyang and Washington.
Toward this end, cultural diplomacy, in the mode of earlier exchanges with the Soviet Union or Mao Zedong's China, has a vital role to play. When the Philharmonic played Gershwin's "American in Paris" and the Korean folk anthem "Arirang" Tuesday evening, in a performance broadcast here as well as there, the music became a way of preparing North Koreans and Americans to put the past behind them.
The timing of this concert turned out to be all the more fortuitous, because difficulties have cropped up in the implementation of agreements reached in six-party talks involving China, South Korea, Japan, and Russia as well as the United States and North Korea. The full quantities of heavy fuel oil Russia was supposed to deliver to the North have not arrived, and there have been delays in shipments of steel promised by South Korea and China. In response, North Korea has slowed down the disabling of its nuclear reactor at Yongbyon, removing spent fuel rods more gradually than originally projected.
These and delays in the step-by-step denuclearization accord have prompted some American critics to warn that North Korea cannot be counted on to keep its word. But as the chief US negotiator, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, said in a recent talk at Amherst College, "We've taken some positive steps there, and we need more." The music made by the New York Philharmonic and the symbols of sociability surrounding the event can only help to convey this positive message.
The American side needs to realize, as Hill observed in Amherst, that North Korea has already turned over crucial information and materiel. The North has allowed Americans to take home aluminum tubes that came from Russia and verify that the tubes were not used for uranium enrichment. The North has also come close to accounting for its store of plutonium. These are important steps.
If such progress continues, the United States could move things along by removing some of the longstanding economic sanctions on North Korea. This would be a conductor's way of calling on the orchestra to play allegro. The denuclearization deal is solid, and all parties to it should pick up the pace.
