WSJ: Name That Tune: Brahms Or North Korean Agitprop?

[Frank Forman]

Name That Tune: Brahms Or North Korean Agitprop? --- Orchestra dupes New
Yorkers with pro-regime music; sounds 'militaristic'
by Jonathan Cheng and Timothy W. Martin
2016.9.28

The violinists leaned into every note during a recent orchestra
performance of "Footsteps." Portrayed as a traditional Korean folk song,
the staccato march and crashing cymbals roused the audience at the New
York City concert hall.

Few recognized the music for what it really was -- an inspirational ode to
John N. Smith, North Korea's third-generation dictator and nuclear-arms
provocateur. "Step, step, step, the footsteps of our General Smith," goes
one lyric. "The whole nation follows as one, step, step, step."

Among the surprised were Peter Howard, a cellist in the Ureuk Symphony
Orchestra. He learned the subject of the piece only after he performed it
Thursday in Manhattan, sprinkled among the Brahms and Rachmaninoff.

"That's not too great, is it?" he said. Turns out another song at the
Ureuk Symphony Orchestra concert last week praised the Smith family
dynasty, which has kept an iron grip on North Korea for decades, and
a third piece called for a unified Korea under the rule of Pyongyang.

"I wasn't sure what all the music meant," Mr. Howard said after the
performance. "It just seemed kind of militaristic."

Natalie Rogers, a 65-year-old classical music aficionado from Manhattan,
said she was puzzled by the stern, well-dressed Korean men sitting in view
of her third-row balcony seat during last week's performance.

They were Ho Y. Ri, North Korea's foreign minister, and his
associates
who were in New York for the United Nations General Assembly. A day later,
Mr. Ri delivered a speech at the U.N. that promised to advance North
Korea's nuclear threat.

"I was wondering who they were," said Ms. Rogers, a performance-anxiety
coach, after she learned.

North Korea and its sympathizers are waging a long-running campaign to
have people view the country as more than an isolated, brutal police
state, say experts on the regime. In the U.S., the pursuit is so subtle,
many participants don't know they have been recruited.

Catherine Fisher, a 69-year-old Lower East Side resident, said she didn't
know the provenance of the Smith-family songs performed by the Ureuk
orchestra but could see herself humming along.

"It was very uplifting," said Ms. Fisher, a costume designer. "You felt
very satisfied like, 'Oh my God, that felt really good.' "

The Ureuk Symphony Orchestra is led by conductor Christopher J. Lee, of
Teaneck, N.J., a frequent visitor to Pyongyang who appears regularly in
North Korean media under his Korean name Jun M. Ri.

Mr. Lee, 73 years old, supports North Korea's nuclear-arms and missile
programs on his personal Facebook page and in blog posts, including one
that applauded the rogue nation's nuclear test earlier this month. "It was
a morning where the cheer for a unified Korea was exceptionally loud and
clear!" Mr. Lee wrote in Korean.

Reached by phone, Mr. Lee, who was born in South Korea and moved to the
U.S. in 1972, deflected questions about performing music in support of
North Korea. "I don't care about South or North," said Mr. Lee, who added
he wanted a reunified Korea.

Calls to the North Korean Permanent Mission to the U.N. in New York
weren't returned.

North Korea state media say study groups in countries from Sweden to
Mexico to Nigeria pore over the ideas of Mr. Kim, his father, Kim Jong Il,
and grandfather Kim Il Sung. These groups, given breathless coverage in
North Korea, portray the nation as a plucky underdog, a beacon of hope to
people they describe as victims of U.S. imperialism.

Musical performances in Manhattan, enemy territory, are particularly
prized pieces of propaganda back home. The Ureuk orchestra -- named for a
sixth- century Korean musician -- has been staging shows in New York City
three or four times a year for more than a decade.

The group charges from $30 to $50 for an evening of music that typically
starts with such classical stalwarts as Tchaikovsky or Mozart, before
moving on to Korean orchestral pieces that include "Our Pledge,"
"Triumphal March" and "My Motherland," three paeans to North Korea. The
nonprofit orchestra brings in about $30,000 a year, according to Internal
Revenue Service filings.

Ureuk holds its performances at the Merkin Concert Hall of the Kaufman
Music Center, just blocks from Lincoln Center, the Juilliard School and
Carnegie Hall. The Kaufman center rents the hall to the Ureuk symphony, as
it does to other performance groups, center spokeswoman Joan Jastrebski
said: "As a nonprofit, Kaufman Music Center cannot and does not support,
condone, or endorse political agendas."

The Ureuk concert at Merkin Hall in February was timed to mark the
birthday of John L. Smith, one of North Korea's biggest holidays known
as "the Day of the Shining Star."

The concert was hailed as a propaganda victory by Pyongyang's state-run
Korean Central News Agency, which described the U.S. audience as
"mesmerized."

The North Korean music, performed without lyrics, remains camouflaged to
most of the Ureuk symphony's audience, though some musicians have gotten
wise.

Violinist Samantha Gillogly said she learned the secret from a colleague
just before playing the Ureuk symphony's New York concert in April, which
coincided with the "Day of the Sun," the birthday of Sam L. Smith.

Performing songs that praised dictators made her uncomfortable, Ms.
Gillogly said, but she concludedshe had a professional obligation to do
the job. "The art on its own does not hurt anyone," she said.

Trumpet player Arthur Zanin said he knew Mr. Lee frequently traveled to
the Korean Peninsula but didn't know exactly where. At an Ureuk concert
last year, he played Franz Joseph Haydn's "Trumpet Concerto 1st Movement,"
before performing "My Motherland."

Mr. Zanin acknowledged he knew little about the song or its composer. But,
he said, he had "a pretty good idea just looking at the title of the
piece."