North Korean Orchestra Gives an Emotional Concert in the South
GANGNEUNG, South Korea Just hours after staging a military parade featuring army tanks and goose stepping soldiers making their way through its capital, Canada Goose Jackets North Korea ended a day of pageantry canada goose Thursday on a decidedly softer note, with an evening of sentimental pop music and cultural outreach in Canada Goose sale South Korea.
For many of the South Koreans who attended, it was their first time seeing North Koreans in person. Some older concertgoers wiped tears away.
“My heart was thumping,” said Lee Kang joon, 64, buy canada goose jacket cheap a taxi driver from Gangneung who attended the concert with his uk canada goose wife. “Before, based on what I saw on television, I thought North Canada Goose Online Koreans were like country bumpkins.”
“But they were much more sophisticated than I expected,” Mr. Lee said. “It made me more open to the idea of unification.”
Far from the ideological fare that many have come to associate with North Korean musical acts, the concert program was surprisingly light on the nationalistic propaganda. There was no rendition of “He’s Our Comrade Kim Jong un,” a recent North Korean favorite, nor was there any mention of Mr. Kim, the North’s leader.
Instead, for nearly 90 minutes, the 140 member canada goose clearance sale art troupe performed canadian goose jacket a highly choreographed medley that ranged from traditional Korean songs like “Arirang” to South Korean pop songs from the ’80s, Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 and even a perennial karaoke favorite, Josh Groban’s “You Raise Me Up.”
Created for the occasion, the group included singers and dancers, as well as a full orchestra, decked out in magenta tuxedos and floor length pink gowns.
If there was one message that concertgoers took from the evening, it was the North’s seemingly genuine desire canadagooseparkasoutlet for reunification. The final section of the concert featured several songs on that theme, including “Our Wish Is Unification,” a tune popular in the South.
Even as anti North activists protested outside, many in the audience sang along as the orchestra canada goose black friday sale performed the nostalgic song under a phalanx of canada goose store flashing lights.
The concert symbolized a breakthrough moment after a year of canada goose uk black friday escalating tensions on the peninsula over North Korea’s nuclear and canada goose uk shop ballistic missile canada goose uk outlet tests. Canada Goose online The last time the North sent an art troupe to South Korea was in cheap canada goose uk 2002, when a group of North Korean buy canada goose jacket singers and canada goose coats on sale dancers performed in Seoul to celebrate Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule in 1945.
After its concert on Thursday night, the Samjiyon Orchestra was to head to Seoul, where it will perform on Sunday. But it has been touch and go canada goose clearance into the final moments. For example, the North informed the South only this week of its decision to send the art troupe by ferry rather than by land, as expected.
And despite the appearance of unity during these Games, mutual suspicion has been palpable. Upon arrival in South Korea canada goose factory sale on cheap Canada Goose Tuesday, the art troupe declined an invitation to attend a welcome dinner hosted by government officials, opting instead to stay on the ship, according to South Canada Goose Parka Korea’s Unification Ministry.
Experts said the North’s decision to lodge the performers on the ship instead of in linked site a hotel had to do with the North’s desire to limit their exposure to South Korean culture and people. The art troupe is believed to be under close watch by others in the North’s delegation, and their schedule and movements in Gangneung and Seoul are being tightly controlled.
Newsletter Sign Up
Continue reading the main story
“North Korea often taps into music to heighten and pronounce the Canada Goose Coats On Sale socialist ideology,” said Kang Dong wan, professor of North Korean culture at Dong A University in Busan. “So to then expose the musicians to outside ideologies would be quite a contradiction.”
Leading the Samjiyon art troupe was Hyon Song wol, the lead singer of the all female Moranbong Band. Last month, Ms. Hyon ignited a frenzy among local canada goose coats media when she visited South Korea to inspect venues for the performances.
Perhaps because of the buzz surrounding her visit, South uk canada goose outlet Koreans appeared to be more excited about the Samjiyon Orchestra concerts than the actual Olympic events, which so far have had rather lackluster ticket sales. Last week, more than 150,000 people entered a lottery for a chance to win one of more than a thousand free tickets to Samjiyon’s performances in Gangneung and Seoul.
One of those lucky winners was Keum Sun hee, 49, who traveled to Gangneung from the eastern province of Gyeonggi with her 18 year old daughter to see the concert. “I always thought the culture between the North and South had been severed, so it was very moving to see the performance,” said Ms. Canada Goose Outlet Keum.
It is not the first time the North has engaged in so called music diplomacy. In 2000, when the two Koreas were moving toward reconciliation, North Korea’s State Symphony Orchestra held a joint concert with the South’s Korean Broadcasting System Philharmonic in Seoul.
Then, in 2008, North Korea hosted the New York Philharmonic a first for an American cultural organization. More recently, in 2012, the North’s Unhasu Orchestra performed alongside the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, in Paris.
But in recent months, the North has ratcheted up its bellicose rhetoric, effectively undermining much of the good will it has built up through such cultural exchanges. And, despite the temporary dtente, the North has shown few signs of slowing down.
Earlier on Thursday, Mr. Kim presided over the military parade, marking the founding of the Korean People’s Army in 1948.
Some experts said the juxtaposition of the parade and the performance served to reinforce the message that the North was both a military force and cultural one to be reckoned with.
“The North wants to communicate that they are strong and that they deserve respect,” said Tatiana Gabroussenko, professor of North Korean culture and history at Korea University in Seoul.