Promoting Inter-Korean Harmony Through Music
When the media and academics discuss the possibility of Korean unification, potential economic, political, and social strife tends to dominate discussion. The two Koreas have been separate for over 70 years, and technically remain in a state of war after the 1953 armistice agreement that ended the Korean War. Since then, tensions have only escalated, especially in light of recent North Korean acts of aggression, including hydrogen bomb tests earlier this year, and more recently the sentencing of 21-year-old University of Virginia student Otto Warmbier to 15 years of hard labor. However, amidst the political strife that surrounds the most isolated nation in the world and its competitive capitalistic neighbor in the South, Mr. Won Hyung Joon, a Juilliard-trained violinist from South Korea, poses a solution that is as simple as it has proven difficult to realize: he wants to organize an ensemble performance of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony and the Korean folk song “Arirang” by a joint orchestra of North and South Koreans.
Won drew inspiration from Maestro Daniel Barenboim’s successful establishment of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, where musicians of Israeli, Palestinian, and Arab descent set aside the political tensions between their respective countries of origin to create music together.
Due to Seoul and Pyongyang’s reluctance to cooperate, Won has continually run into barriers that have prevented him from recreating Barenboim’s project in Korea. In 2014, he tried to schedule a concert in Germany, a location chosen for its neutrality in North-South Korean relations and its symbolism as a nation that was also split by Cold War-era differences in politics and ideology. However, organizers had to cancel the concert when North Korean approval of the project could not be obtained. South Korean officials indefinitely postponed yet another performance, scheduled for August 2015 at Panmunjom on the Demilitarized Zone between the countries, citing a lack of formal endorsement from Pyongyang.
Despite these obstacles, Won remains adamant that he will one day accomplish his goal of uniting the two Koreas through musical performance. He concedes, however, that can he only do so after garnering support from the international community and political figures in Seoul and Pyongyang.
During his 2016 campaign to raise awareness of his project in the United States, Won performed and spoke at an event hosted by Georgetown Truth and Human Rights in North Korea, (THiNK) on February 23. More than 50 students attended the event, and participated in a question-and-answer session afterward.