The Big Ten Looks Like Amateur Night

DETENTE on the Korea Peninsula proceeds at a glacial pace.

Last week, after eight months of preliminary talks, the Red Cross organizations of the two Koreas finally agreed to an agenda for discussions this summer on the reuniting of families separated by the division of the country after World War II, 27 years ago. Even that was judged a significant breakthrough. Earlier, in a conversation with the New York Times's Harrison Salisbury, Premier Kim II Sung reiterated his demand for a complete withdrawal of the U.S.'s 43,000 troops from South Korea as a precondition of resuming normal relations.

Salisbury found in Pyongyang an extraordinary atmosphere of suspicion after two decades of isolation. The U.S., he reported, is portrayed as a "hawk-beaked, claw-fingered predator 'aggressor' with North Korea as its special target." Like the Chinese, the North Koreans have mastered the art of grandstand spectacle, in part to get across their revolutionary message. This one (above) was occasioned by the official visit of Major General Mohamed Siad Barre, the President of the Somali Republic.

In the stadium stands, thousands of youngsters flipped color cards to form a pictorial backdrop for another 45,000 youngsters performing ballet and theatrical maneuvers, including realistic battle scenes from the Korean War. Thousands of other Pyongyang residents, carrying pink paper flowers, watched the spectacle: "The two-hour performance included a series of nearly 200 mosaics," wrote Salisbury, "that made those half-time card spectacles at Big Ten football games look like amateur night."

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