In our busy lives we sometimes fail to appreciate the quiet gift of God when it is bestowed. So it was when I found myself the lucky recipient of a ticket to attend the final performance of the Pyongyang Children and Students Performing Arts Troupe in Seoul on May 28, 2000.
The allocation for public sale for all the performances had been sold out in two hours, and there were very few complimentary ones. It was a wonderful opportunity, this I knew, yet I hesitated to take up a seat that I felt should really be filled by a citizen from these shores. Yet a voice inside led me to believe I was meant to go.
Inside the rather magnificent Seoul Arts Center Opera House, my seat was closer to the front than I had expected. I could see the Little Angels, dressed in their quaint red, white and blue costumes, filling up the front rows, as if to offer special encouragement to their northern guests.
The kindly Korean grandmother sitting next to me asked me where I was from. Her country had been tom in half as if by two hungry wolves when she was about the same age as the girls and boys who were about to take the stage. The kindly sparkle in her eye gave me the feeling it had been right to come.
Then the curtain went up and that was quickly confirmed. Up to that point I had been somewhat melancholy, wondering if my ten years in Korea focusing mostly on international activities had left me isolated from the anguished history of my host country. Would I be able to connect with the inevitably emotional content of the evening, I wondered.
As the first group of real, live North Korean children -- they looked just the same as the ones who live here in the South! -- ran out onto the stage to sing and dance, I felt a surge of emotion that seemed to come from somewhere beyond myself. It was as if something divinely inspired was about to happen. From the point of view of the artistry alone, this was an uplifting, and touching demonstration of formidable talent. From the outset to the finale the virtuosity was unquestionable. There was mastery of the musical arts that had me wondering how people so tender in years could have had time to develop such mind-body synergy.
There are those who give the easy answer, which is that the North Korean training ethic is state-sponsored, militaristic and unrelenting. Yes, I am sure they had worked extremely hard. A few days later, at a function in Seoul attended by many diplomats and government officials, a young man from the Ministry of Defense offered me the simplistic explanation that such performers are like trained circus animals. But this relic of the peninsula's decades-old propaganda war (a war in which a cease fire has now been called by both sides!) missed the point entirely, as he would have known had he been there. I told him so.
Excellence in any of the arts requires total commitment, self-discipline and sacrifice. I am sure that these North Korean children had embraced all three of the above to a level that might intimidate many of us. Ironically, such a way of life is not so dissimilar to the path of spiritual growth advocated by Rev. Moon. "Direct dominion" in the arts is surely arrived at when the technical mastery has become second nature (always through grueling effort) and the artist becomes free to interpret, create and express personality and emotion through the art form.
The Pyongyang Children and Students Performing Arts Troupe had a powerful effect on all of us because they achieved this so visibly. The love of their arts and their close relationship with their purpose to bring joy were manifest. They infused their singing, playing and dancing with their individual personalities and collective culture. And we in the audience were transfixed in our seats by their enthusiasm, joyfulness, and, without doubt, their eagerness to communicate with us, "We are warm-blooded boys and girls too!"
It is a little hard to describe the performance in a way that could bring it to life for the reader. The dance pieces were beautifully and imaginatively choreographed. The singing was fascinating, partly also due to the youth of the singers (one as young as five years old) and the haunting, slightly nasal style of the North Korean vocalists.
There was a group of five accordion players who played a form of what I can only describe as modem jazz with perfect synchronization; the young musicians' fingers blurred with the speed at which they flew over the keys and stops. Three kayagum, a stringed instrument usually heard rendering more ballad-like, slow paced traditional music, were played with what sounded more reminiscent of a rich-toned banjo roll than the music of the king's court! More recognizably traditional music there was too, and this was rendered with deep feeling.
At one point two dancers drew back a small curtain to reveal a mirror and then danced in front of it. I thought, "Aha, their 'reflections' are two other people!" After two or three minutes of dancing, however, I could not even minutely discern that the two mirror images were anything other than that. So when the reflections did suddenly jump out of the mirror onto the stage, the gasp from everyone in the audience confirmed that it was not my eyes that had deceived me.
A young drummer boy captured us with his mastery of the traditional Korean jangoo hourglass drum. His face was adorned with an engaging smile, and he would cock his hip as he launched into his drum solos. Although a newspaper here described the little man as "swaggering," it mentioned the cheers and applause he received. Completely one with his art, he beamed out into the audience with his cheeky nine-year-old's grin and gave everything of himself. It was so endearing, funny, full of life. Like all of those who performed, his talent was the vehicle to convey his heart and that of his country.
Both traditional Korean instruments and modem western instruments were played with an equally native touch. I wondered if they had put an emphasis on a more international style knowing they were reaching out beyond their own walls, and even beyond the shores of the peninsula. If the succession of front-page photographs in the Seoul major dailies was any indication, their visit was a landmark event in warming the heart of the South. The timing, just two weeks before the North-South Korean summit, filled one with the sense of the unfolding dispensation of Heaven.
Overall, there were visible differences in the North and South Korean approach to traditional music and dance, as if the cultures have slightly diverged over more than half a century of separation. It was evident in the colors of the costumes and in the style of the traditional music and dance. But it was no less magnificent a cultural monument.
As I watched the children perform, I wondered if perhaps somewhere in the audience there might be a grandmother or great aunt of one of the performers, separated by decades of silence and unknown to each other. The feeling that these children were long-lost relatives seemed to be taking hold of the audience collectively; I felt it too.
At one point a female singer in her early teens came down from the stage and walked down the aisle as she sang, holding hands with those seated within range and receiving hugs in return. An atmosphere charged with emotion descended upon the entire hall. It was as if a portal was opened up to a realm of intense longing in the spirit world, a realm that perhaps only in such circumstances as these could find expression.
I had a sense of being swept up in feelings that belonged to a people and a history I had not been born part of. Yet at that moment it was as if we were all of the same blood and inheritance. Everyone seemed to be experiencing this together. Here and there, people in the audience were weeping quietly. If one needed further convincing of the closeness of the spirit world, one needed only to have been present at this occasion.
The young lady singer's presence among the audience was like North Korea extending its very heart into the South in a deeply personal, intimate way. One lady even stood up and, seemingly unable to restrain herself to being part of the audience, danced in the aisle with the young singer. She then followed her back up onto the stage (to the consternation of the security people!) where they did a little Korean traditional dance together for a few moments. No harm was done, and I dare say quite a bit of good; she was interviewed in the press and said, "I couldn't stop myself."
Following an unforgettable hour and a half, we reached the finale of the evening and of the performances as a whole. While all the performers gathered on the stage, we all stood and sang "Uri-e sowon-un tongil" together. After a few lines we all joined hands, and it felt as if a circle was complete. After 20 years of singing this song, it is hard to describe the feeling of singing it along with thousands of Koreans, from both sides of the 38th Parallel. It was as if a war had just ended and people were re-experiencing emotions that had been frozen during hostilities. They were singing, crying and celebrating peace.
The notion that the people of the North and South are ideological enemies seemed to dissipate like smoke. And it was a group of young children who had shown us grown-ups the truth.
Source: Today's World, May 2000
