Junior’s Pyongyang Concert Aborted

Bong Ihn Koh ’08, a Cabot House resident from South Korea and a gifted cellist, was to make a journey next week to North Korea to perform in the Isang Yun World Peace concert, an event that would have brought together musicians from North and South Korea. But due to recent tensions generated by reports of a North Korean nuclear test last Monday, Koh will no longer be participating.

Koh, who was to perform in Pyongyang with the South Korean conductor Chung Myung-Whun, who will also not be participating, wrote in an e-mail that he is "utterly disappointed" that he will not be performing in the concert commemorating the 89th birthday of the late Korean composer, Isang Yun.

The concert, scheduled for Oct. 20, would have been the first joint tribute to Yun by the two Koreas.

"The event itself is taking place, but the South Korean performers will not be participating this time," said an official of the Isang Yun Peace Foundation in Seoul—the South Korean organization planning the concert with the North—in a phone interview with The Crimson. The official asked not to be named because of the sensitive nature of the situation.

Isang Yun, a South Korean composer, was arrested in 1967 and sentenced to death for alleged communist ties after he visited North Korea in order to organize concerts that would involve musicians from both countries. Yun was eventually released and lived in exile in Germany until his death in 1995.

Koh wrote that "performing the Isang Yun Cello Concerto with the Isang Yun Orchestra in the Isang Yun Concert Hall in North Korea would have been a priceless experience for me."

"My ambitious dream has always been to perform this piece at a celebratory concert of the Korea unification, when that moment comes, and this event was an opportunity to partially realize my dream," he added.

Koh, a biochemical sciences concentrator, wrote that he is "planning to hold a concert here at Harvard with an entirely-Yun program with a similar title, hopefully within a similar time period of the concert."

Condemnation from the United States and over 70 countries in the United Nations followed North Korea’s announcement of its first nuclear test on Monday.

North Korea has cancelled earlier joint cultural events that were planned for this July, after it test-fired six missiles that month.

—Staff writer Kristina M. Moore can be reached at moore2@fas.harvard.edu.

CORRECTION: The print and original online version of this story incorrectly stated that Bong Ihn Koh '08 is currently in South Korea. In fact, he was back in Cambridge.