The North Korean government is in suspended animation, trying to change and yet stay the same, reports Lindsey Hilsum
In Pyongyang, I felt like a character in a play. As we were ushered into the Mangyongdae Schoolchildren's Palace - a monolithic concrete structure of indescribable ugliness on the outskirts of the North Korean capital - melodic tinkling wafted across the cavernous hall.
On cue, 80 journalists veered round to take a look. In a side room, a chubby prepubescent boy in glasses was playing a white grand piano, a man in a dark suit leaning over him pretending to correct his technique. We tramped in, set up our cameras and started to film, but neither looked up. Of course not - they had been placed there to play the parts of student and teacher, and we had been co-opted to act as admiring bystanders.
Our minders hurried us into an auditorium where an ensemble of small children, word- and note-perfect, danced and sang numbers including "Jingle Bells" and "Clementine" (in Korean), and those old favourites "Generalissimo Kim Il-sung Danced With Us" and "We Are Faithful Only to General Kim Jong-il".
It was the morning after the New York Philharmonic had made history as the first American orchestra ever to hold a concert in Pyongyang. The two countries are still technically at war, as no peace agreement was signed after the 1953 armistice that halted the Korean War and divided communist north from capitalist south.
President George W Bush counted North Korea in his "axis of evil" and once said he "loathed" the country's Dear Leader, Kim Jong-il, while the North Korean government routinely describes the Americans as "imperialist warmongers". But after the North Koreans exploded a nuclear device in October 2006, serious negotiations started, culminating in an agreement last year. Under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency and American non-proliferation experts, the Yongbyon nuclear facility has been largely dismantled. The process of declaring all nuclear materials has slowed because of arguments over what the North Koreans will get in return, but scientists say that it would now take longer to rehabilitate Yongbyon than to build a new reactor from scratch.
The concert was a gesture of cultural diplomacy, initiated by the North Korean regime and approved by the US state department. The opening had been carefully agreed - the flags of each nation stood on either side of the stage and both national anthems were played. An audience of North Korean bureaucrats, sporting Dear Leader lapel pins, stood in respect during the "Star-Spangled Banner" and enthusiastically applauded Wagner, Dvorak, Gershwin and "Arirang", a Korean folk song popular on both sides of the Demilitarised Zone.
Beyond the East Pyongyang Grand Theatre, snow fell and people huddled against the cold. In recent years, in Pyongyang at least, many have managed to acquire warm clothes and most apartments have glass in the windows, but there is rarely heating or hot water. With no gritters or salt, people were using squares of plywood with crude wooden handles to clear the snow. Food is reportedly short, especially outside the capital.
The minders assigned to prevent journalists and musicians from talking to ordinary Koreans took my group to a shop. There were no shoppers. It existed purely to give the impression that there were goods to buy - Krug champagne for ?190 a bottle, for example, and tins of trifolati mushrooms imported from Italy. Outside, an elderly couple were chopping kindling from a broken branch with an axe. As I tried to take a photograph, our minder pulled me away.
It reminded me of Iraq under Saddam Hussein, but in North Korea the cult of personality is more extreme. The Pyongyang Times described how the Dear Leader's birthday was heralded by a "majestic" sunrise over Mount Paektu, his mythical birthplace (he was really born in Russia). "The heaven unfolded a mysterious scene as a reflection of the reverence of the Korean army and people for Kim Jong-il," it read.
The city skyline is dominated by a 30 times life-size bronze statue of his father, the Great Leader, Kim Il-sung. I watched as newly-weds bowed, and gave offerings of flowers.
The North Korean government is in suspended animation, trying to change and yet stay the same. Inviting the New York Philharmonic, and allowing foreign reporters to file by internet and satellite, suggests that the government wants to start opening up the country, but without slackening political and social control.
"This is a society in transition," said a western diplomat. "They know there can be change - they've seen China and Vietnam."
At the hotel where the orchestra and journalists stayed, food was plentiful and the rooms were so well heated that we longed to open the stubbornly locked windows. As we left for the airport, heading for Seoul, Beijing, Tokyo and New York, the internet was cut. The theatre and hotel went dark again, and they turned off the street lights.
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