Date in Pyongyang.(ESSAY)(New York Philharmonic Orchestra)

LAST summer, the New York Philharmonic was invited by the government of North Korea to play a concert in Pyongyang. The Philharmonic accepted; the concert will take place on February 26. And we confront a burning question: Were they right to accept?

In a public statement, Zarin Mehta, the orchestra's president and executive director--and brother of the renowned conductor Zubin, incidentally--said, "As you might imagine, we approached [North Korea's invitation] with caution and reservation since, like most Americans--like most people throughout the world--we had little knowledge of this very foreign country." Actually, we have quite a bit of knowledge--from defectors and others.

In brief, North Korea is a perfect totalitarian nightmare: of thought control, concentration camps, famine, torture, and murder. The late Jeane Kirkpatrick described it as a "psychotic state," going on to say that such states are exceedingly rare in history. Norman Podhoretz once described "evil" as "the strongest of all epithets." And the dictatorship of the Kims--first Kim Il Sung and now Kim Jong Il--is evil.

Zarin Mehta has made clear that the New York Philharmonic would not be going to North Korea without the State Department's blessing--which it certainly has. In this sense, the visit can be seen as official. And there has been some guffawing in the press about how the Bush administration is sending an orchestra to a key member of the "Axis of Evil." One might fairly ask, "How can you expect the New York Philharmonic to be more hard-line, or more principled, or more concerned about human rights, than the Bush administration?"

To be sure, there is opposition to the visit within the administration (and to the president's current, relatively conciliatory policy toward North Korea). Dissenters believe that the visit will hand Kim Jong Il a propaganda victory, while doing the Free World--and the North Korean people--no good at all. They believe that the visit will demoralize North Koreans hoping for a better life, and hoping for support from the West. The visit may indicate that America is reconciled to the Kim regime, its legitimacy and permanence.

Years ago, Vladimir Bukovsky, the Soviet dissident, said that Free World governments should ask a question, before making decisions concerning totalitarian regimes: "How will it look to the boys in the camps?"

As of this writing, the Philharmonic's schedule in Pyongyang is not exactly clear. They are expected to meet with local music students and instruct them. And students are to attend a Philharmonic rehearsal. As to who will attend the concert itself: almost surely, governmental and military elite--apparatchiks, or the nomenklatura, as they used to say in the Soviet Union.