Karin J. Lee, Executive Director of the national Committee on North Korea, writes, “The concert itself did not resolve deeply held national security concerns on either side -nor should anyone expect a concert to have such an impact What may have changed, incrementally, is that a few words have been added to a common cultural vocabulary. Now each country has an additional image of the other country, a new cultural point of reference to add to the customary images of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. Ultimately, exchanges such as these prepare the people in both countries to sustain the peace that we hope will be brokered by our respective governments.”

Katharine H.S. Moon, Professor in the Department of Political Science at Wellesley College and Associate Fellow at the Asia Society in New York, writes, “The US government has kept a long arm’s distance from the musical overtures between Pyongyang and the Philharmonic, but it also has missed a unique opportunity to assert one of the best examples of its “soft power” not only to North Korea but to the rest of the world.”

Mark J. Valencia, Maritime Policy Analyst in Kaneohe, Hawaii and a Nautilus Institute Senior Associate, writes, “The publication of an article critical of the Philippine government’s agreements with China in 2004 and with China and Vietnam in 2005 to undertake joint seismic surveys in the South China Sea has unleashed a fusillade of allegations that have rocked the government of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo… in approving this arrangement, the Philippine government undermined its political relations within ASEAN and its own legal claims to islands, waters and continental shelf in the South China Sea.”