hankyoreh

(From left) South Korean composer Yoon Sang

A farewell banquet for South Korean musicians visiting Pyongyang for two musical performances was held on the evening of Apr. 3 at Misangak, a guest house for North Korea’s United Front Department (UFD).

“Beautiful Pyongyang songs rang out over the South’s land as the frost flowers bloomed in February, and now Southern songs have echoed amid all of our applause today in April as the spring scenery ripens,” said Workers’ Party vice chairman and UFD director Kim Yong-chol.

“The songs shared by North and South’s musicians movingly showed that a new spring of hope will indeed come when we each travel to the other side to share warmth,” he added.

Kim went on to express his “thanks to the Southern performers who made such a great contribution to artistic exchange and cooperation between South and North and improving inter-Korean relations with this Pyongyang performance, and to the various officials who did their best to ensure the success of the performance.”

“Let us all treasure this moving moment today and let the songs that rang out in the North and South become a great symphony for the people,” he continued.

In his own address, South Korean Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism Do Jong-hwan said that South and North Korean musicians and athletes had “begun opening the first gateway to peace ahead of the historic inter-Korean summit this April 27.”

“This is the first time in 13 years that [South Korean musicians] have come to give a performance. We must not let this be something that only happens every decade or so again,” he added.

Do also stressed that culture and sports “have to power to make people respect and understand the other side and communicate naturally.”

“That strength must be used as a basis for creating and implementing a medium- and long-term blueprint for cultural exchange to allow the Korean people to come together regularly rather than through one-off visits,” he said. He went on to propose resuming suspended inter-Korean cultural exchange efforts such as joint compilation of the “Gyeoremal Keunsajeon” (Great Korean) dictionary and joint excavation, preservation, and maintenance of the Manwoldae site in Kaesong.

“The cherry blossoms have begun blooming by the Han River in Yeouido [a neighborhood in Seoul], new green shoots are emerging on the willows by the Daedong River, and apricot blossoms are flowering,” Do continued.

“Let us make these spring flowers fill the landscape throughout Korea through our summit in late April, tending the trees well and helping them bear fruit so that an ‘Autumn Has Come’ performance can be staged in Seoul this fall as proposed by Chairman Kim Jong-un,” he continued.

The farewell banquet on Apr. 3 lasted around two hours and 20 minutes and was attended by Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland chairman Ri Son-kwon and Samjiyon Orchestra director Hyon Song-wol from the North Korean side. Afterwards, the South Korean musicians returned to their lodgings and boarded a charter plane from Pyongyang at around 1 am, arriving at Incheon International Airport at around 2 am.

By Jung In-hwan, staff reporter

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