NYC Audience Gives Standing Ovation to Song Praising Kim Jong Un

If anyone in NYC were capable of embarrassment, this should do the job even if giving Hillary Clinton 80% of their votes did not.

The violinists leaned into every note during a recent orchestra performance of “Footsteps.” Portrayed as a traditional Korean folk song, the staccato march and crashing cymbals roused the audience at the New York City concert hall.

Few recognized the music for what it really was—an inspirational ode to Kim Jong Un,North Korea’s third-generation dictator and nuclear-arms provocateur. “Step, step, step, the footsteps of our General Kim,” goes one lyric. “The whole nation follows as one, step, step, step.”

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It was so peppy and upbeat that the crowd gave it a spontaneous standing ovation.

The orchestra, seems to be an elaborate bit of trolling that may also violate US sanctions against North Korea depending upon the funding sources.

The Ureuk Symphony Orchestra is led by conductor Christopher J. Lee, of Teaneck, N.J., a frequent visitor to Pyongyang who appears regularly in North Korean media under his Korean name Ri Jun Mu.

Mr. Lee, 73 years old, supports North Korea’s nuclear-arms and missile programs on his personal Facebook page and in blog posts, including one that applauded the rogue nation’s nuclear test earlier this month. “It was a morning where the cheer for a unified Korea was exceptionally loud and clear!” Mr. Lee wrote in Korean.

Reached by phone, Mr. Lee, who was born in South Korea and moved to the U.S. in 1972, deflected questions about performing music in support of North Korea. “I don’t care about South or North,” said Mr. Lee, who added he wanted a reunified Korea.

The latter statement is pretty obviously crap as the the North Korean foreign minister was at the performance described by the Wall Street Journal.

The concert was hailed as a propaganda victory by Pyongyang’s state-run Korean Central News Agency, which described the U.S. audience as “mesmerized.” The performance “represented the revolutionary careers of the peerlessly great men who exalted the dignity of the country and the nation before the world,” the North Korean news agency said.

The U.S. concerts allow North Korea to brag, “We’re a cultural powerhouse, and Kim Jong Un is respected,” said  Adam Cathcart, an expert in North Korea history at the University of Leeds in the U.K. and a conservatory-trained cellist.

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I’d like to see Mr. Lee get a visit from the FBI to discuss his non-registration as a foreign agent under FARA and from the IRS to look at his books.

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