NORTH KOREA:IN THE most powerful symbol to date of thawing international relations with North Korea, the New York Philharmonic became the first big-name cultural import into the isolated Stalinist state with an historic concert in Pyongyang.
With the Stars and Stripes on one side of the stage and the North Korean flag on the other, the New York Philharmonic's music director Lorin Maazel conducted his players through pieces from Dvorak, Gershwin and Wagner.
The concert began with North Korea's national anthem, Patriotic Song, and then went on to The Star-Spangled Banner. Both anthems received a standing ovation from the audience, which was made up of sober-suited North Korean men, women in brightly-coloured traditional dress and the largest delegation of Americans to visit the North. There was no sign of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il in the 2,500-seat East Pyongyang Grand Theatre.
Relations between Washington and Pyongyang have been tense since the 1950-53 Korean War that divided the Korean peninsula into North and South. The conflict ended in a ceasefire in 1953 but there has still never been an official peace treaty.
Agreements between Communist countries and Western powers traditionally have a cultural element, and the Philharmonic's visit was agreed on as part of the deal last year to end the North's nuclear weapons programme.
North Korea has shut its main nuclear reactor and started the dismantling process under international supervision, but the process has become bogged down because Washington says North Korea has failed to give a full account of its nuclear capabilities, as it promised to do under an international deal.
Mr Maazel pointed out how a performance by the New York Philharmonic in the Soviet Union in 1959 had acted as a force for change, gradually leading to an opening up of Russia.