Word: orchestra
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...full of an "If it's Tuesday it must be Tehran" sort of world-weariness that's partly feigned, but partly real. As a chartered Asiana Airlines 747 from Beijing bore down on Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, on Feb. 25, carrying the New York Philharmonic orchestra and 80 journalists, that ennui pretty much went out the window. Television cameramen and photographers jostled for position in window seats to capture images of the brown, frozen landscape as it came into view below. Reporters brought out their small digital cameras to try to get the same photos for their scrapbooks...
...Music Begin The swings between humor and pathos ended that evening at the East Pyongyang Grand Theater, an ornate, three-tier orchestra hall that had been recently fitted with a new acoustic shell around the stage to make the hall worthy of the New York Philharmonic. Some 1,400 people were present - mostly North Koreans, and a few dozen foreign diplomats and businesspeople. Who the North Koreans were, exactly, was maddeningly vague. Maazel had said before the concert that he hoped "ordinary" Koreans would be among those attending, but no one from the orchestra had a clue who the tickets...
...slow-motion diplomatic thaw already underway between Pyongyang and Washington, I would finally get to see a little of the place for myself. The North Koreans, to say the least, are control freaks, and hordes of minders immediately surrounded us on the tarmac as we waited for the orchestra leader, Lorin Maazel, and his musicians to follow us down and take a "class photo" in front of a beaming mosaic of the Great Leader. The deputy minister of culture, Song Sok Hwan, stepped forward to greet Maazel - Monday's money shot for the cameramen among us - so as one they...
...Mind Your Minder While the orchestra rehearsed, the government minders took the 80 mostly American journalists on a whirlwind tour of Pyongyang. Kim Il Sung, the late Great Leader, is still the dominant figure in the intense cult of personality that is North Korea. His image is everywhere, most prominently on an overlook where a gigantic bronze statue stands in front of the Korean Revolution Museum. After we boarded the buses, a group of about 40 North Koreans walked up and made their way to the statue. We were just about to leave, but again there was a journalists' revolt...
...than the ones we're being shown," she said. The students sat huddled in winter jackets, some wearing hoods or hats. Sadder was the breakfast room at the hotel that morning, just after a complimentary - and lavish - buffet had been served to us. A friend of mine, from the orchestra's delegation, arrived after 9 a.m., when the buffet had closed. As she entered she saw a couple of the waitresses at work. They weren't clearing the mountains of food away; they were taking pictures of it. It has been 10 years since the great famine ended, killing more...