Pyongyang, are you ready to rock?!

When a probe lands in an unknown territory, there is intense curiosity with what it finds, coupled with the excitement of actually landing in terra incognita. This holds true if the destination is Mars. It holds true for North Korea also. So, when Slovenian hard rock act, Laibach, landed in Planet Pyongyang to play a show on Wednesday, it made us, untouched by the Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un, sit up and take note.

No, it wasn’t quite Elton John playing in the USSR in 1979. Or even German disco band (and a 1980s favourite in India) Boney M when they played in the Soviet Union in 1978. Playing a bootstrap version of Europe’s cheesy 1986 classic ‘The Final Countdown’, an industrial rock version of the Beatles’ ‘Across the Universe’, and — probably a Kim Jong-un request — a Sound of Music medley, Laibach rocked. Although from feedback received, the band rocked a mostly quiet, super-well-behaved capacity crowd of 1,000. Perhaps like exbasketballer Dennis Rodman’s not-too-long-ago visit to North Korea, it is up to dodgy cultural representatives of the free world to bring back records of, if nothing else, dodgy North Korean cultural encounters with the free world. We propose that Honey Singh be sent to perform in North Korea. And while he’s at it, to Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir as well. Could be Dolby Track diplomacy.