I am sure a lot of Korea watchers know about the ROK village of Daeseong-dong. However, I just learned about it today, and is pretty interesting. While it seems nobody been to the North’s Kijong-Dong with video/picture footage to see what really goes on there, I found a short video clip about the other side and the propaganda war with North that continues to this day:
This to me is another oddity only from the other side of the divide. According to the video, a good face has to be shown to the North as the North shows its best face to the South. Anyway, if anybody does not know a lot about the village like I do, this is an interesting clip to see. Enjoy!
P.S.- As usual, I would like to hear feedback from those that may have been to the village or know more information regarding it. I would be most grateful.
Stories like this warms my heart. I had no idea a Christian group went to North Korea, a land where the only religion is the state sponsored Juche where two men are worshiped in one of the most pervasive cults of personality ever. People are sent to gulags for life for not following along. Therefore, I am pretty surprised they were allowed to perform when the ideologies are polar opposites.
Imagine an American Christian rock band going to North Korea, a country accused of being one of the most oppressed in terms of religious freedom, and not only performing a Christian hymn but winning an award for it at an international festival.
That’s what a Grammy Award-winning group, the Casting Crowns, did in April this year.
In fact, the band members learned and sang a North Korean song in Pyongyang, brought a recording of it back to the U.S., and added it as a bonus track to their latest album, released in August. They are on a national tour now, and showing video clips of their performance in North Korea at each concert.
No, I am not posting the video to imply Christianity is superior to another religion or to promote Christianity per se. This is to show people have the right to worship or not worship as they please without somebody telling them otherwise. Freedom of religion should be a fundamental human right, and North Korea is not part of that program. Could this be a step in the right direction? I do not know, but all the same, it choked me up. I still do not know how they got the permission to do this, but I am glad it was done.
New York Philharmonic officials were returning yesterday from an exploratory trip to North Korea with glowing reports of concert possibilities in the capital, Pyongyang, but they faced the potentially difficult task of selling the idea to the players.
The orchestra has traveled to the Soviet Union and China but perhaps never to a place as isolated or tightly controlled as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Philharmonic officials said that a decision on whether to accept a North Korean invitation was still at least a month away. If the orchestra goes, it will probably be on the tail end of a February trip to China.
Zarin Mehta, the orchestra’s president, and Eric Latzky, its spokesman, flew home yesterday. Before leaving from a stopover in Beijing, Mr. Latzky said Mr. Mehta would make a “special effort” to ensure that the orchestra was comfortable with the trip. “Zarin will consult closely with the orchestra,” he said.
This is a very good read by Bruce Klingner. Again, there is not much for me to comment on, because this explains everything just fine. In a nutshell, it outlines the problems and the possible solutions.
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