The Ballad Of Kim Jong Il

David Guttenfelder / AP

Symphony for North Korea: The New York Phil's historic concert in Pyongyang on Feb. 26 had both fans and diplomats in raptures

Foreign correspondents can be a pretty jaded lot. Particularly when around one another, we tend to be full of an "If it's Tuesday it must be Tehran" sort of world-weariness that's partly feigned, but partly real. As a chartered Asiana Airlines 747 from Beijing bore down on Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, on Feb. 25, carrying the New York Philharmonic orchestra and 80 journalists, that ennui pretty much went out the window. Television cameramen and photographers jostled for position in window seats to capture images of the brown, frozen landscape as it came into view below. Reporters brought...

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