By Michael Breen
Despite news reports last week that Eric Clapton has in principle accepted an invitation to perform in north Korea, the British rock guitarist hasn't announced his final decision and is certain to be bombarded with conflicting advice as he weighs it.
The main hurdle will be to convince himself to play in a country whose leaders are so paranoid about the poisonous influence of the world that they have kept their people ignorant of rock music to the extent that nobody there knows him.
Well, almost no one. One known North Korean fan, and my guess the person who pushed through the invitation, is Kim Jong-chol, the Swiss-educated son of leader Kim Jong-il.
Our intelligence on this matter goes back to the summer of 2006 when Japan's Fuji TV broadcast pictures allegedly of the younger Kim at Clapton concerts in Germany. Some outsiders believe this son is being groomed for the top job. One day he could be the Cool Leader. I imagine him in front of the mirror playing air guitar to ``Sunshine of Your Love'' when he should be practicing a five-hour speech for some Workers' Party committee meeting.
But, we must admit, it may not have been him at those concerts. In fact, it may just be foreign speculation that he is being trained for high office.
Welcome to North Korea. The truth is we know almost nothing of the place, so little that we can't even trust what we think we know from our own experience. On my first visit, in 1989, I conducted an informal survey of Koreans in their 20s and 30s, asking them their favorite western music. They all said, ``Beethoven.'' When pressed, no one, not even my guide, had heard of rock music let alone knew the names of Elvis Presley, The Beatles or Michael Jackson. I now wonder if they were having me on and that somewhere there were revolutionary underground cells meeting in secret to listen to old tapes of Cream and the Jimi Hendrix Experience.
If there are such fans, they'll have to keep taciturn at the concert because in a country where expressing a desire to visit France can get you sent to the gulag, nodding your head without permission to music by a foreigner must be a capital offense.
No, Clapton in Kim Il Sung Square will not be Paul McCartney in Red Square playing ``Back to the USSR.'' You won't see graffiti popping up in Hamheung saying, ``Clapton is the Great Leader.''
So, if a tour is no good for CD sales, the reason to go must be humanitarian. But that doesn't fit this gig either. North Koreans are waiting for Bush, not Bono.
And that's where the conflicting arguments come in. Such is the wall of mistrust and mutual ignorance between the world and its most closed society that any suggestion to take a brick out of it prompts a cacophony of cheerleaders, peaceniks, cynics and peddlers of doom.
We saw this with last week's performance in Pyongyang by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, which was broadcast live through North Korea. When the orchestra played the Korean folk song Arirang, something happened. Musician, audience member, foreign correspondent, south Korean TV viewer, resident alien in Seoul, choked up without knowing why.
The rational discussion around this poignant moment was about whether north Korea really is encouraging cultural exchanges with the West, whether it ever can come out of the cold under the Kim regime, and whether all this will help talks to end the country's nuclear weapons program.
Some say yes and some say no. Some squirm at emotion and try to take a position superior to it. Some, especially defectors, think that doing anything non-aggressive strengthens the dictatorship.
But what if that emotional moment, the removal of the one brick, is an end in itself? That's something music can do for it is no respecter of borders or boundaries. (How else could a working class boy from England become a legendary player of music that began in black America?)
So, the question comes back to whether Eric Clapton can reach an audience this ignorant. In that regard, he might take a lesson from the evangelist Billy Graham. By chance, I was in Pyongyang in 1992 when he visited in response to North Korea's early outreach to bury the hatchet with Washington. The legendary American preacher spoke at the one Protestant church in the country. This congregation was permitted by the dictatorship to pose as Christian so the country could claim respect for religious freedom, link up with dissidents in South Korea, and encourage donations from well-meaning co-religionists overseas.
Billy Graham could have giddily accepted the flock as bona fide Christian. He could have righteously accused them of deception. But he took a third position. In a perfectly nuanced and graciously delivered sermon, he simply taught them Christianity 101. His delivery, and the fluid translation in the pauses by Stephen Linton, the prominent aid worker, was flawless. North Korea wasn't liberated the next day, but you knew this perfect duet touched some hearts in a way they will never forget.
And that is what Eric Clapton could do. They have heard an American orchestra play a classical Arirang. Now they may be ready for the blues version and a lesson about improvisation, passion, freedom and individuality.
And that's why I, for one, would urge him to go. So that the suffering people of North Koreans can, for the first time, hear the blues.
Michael Breen is president of Insight Communications Consultants in Seoul. He can be reached at mike.breen@insightcomms.com.
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