Slowly, with the help of its southern brother, North Korea may be changing from an iron-curtained isolate into an actual international player that does more than manufacture, say, counterfeit Viagra. The biggest tool shaping that changeover: Kaesong Industrial Park, a South Korean-run manufacturing facility on North Korean soil.

Fences and vigilant soldiers separate the park from the rest of North Korea. That has not prevented South Koreans from dreaming of the industrial park as a capitalist foothold that might some day undermine this Stalinist state, making it the North Korean equivalent of Shenzhen, the special investment zone that helped begin China’s free-market miracle nearly 20 years ago.

[...] The piecemeal brand of change is seen in the experiences of SJ Tech, a South Korean maker of car and cellphone parts that built a $4 million factory here four years ago.

The company’s first North Korean employees had never even seen a keyboard, much less a computer. [...] But the North Koreans were eager learners, sketching keyboards on paper to teach themselves typing. Now, SJ Tech’s 430 North Korean employees have learned enough to run the factory without South Korean supervisors.

In a telling sign, they have also changed their haircuts to look more like their South Korean colleagues.

What's most crucial about this place, to me, is that it is a way for the North and South to go eye to eye in a non-military environment. Instead of staring each other down over a conference table, they can roll up their sleeves and get to work on projects together. They're dealing, however marginally, with another country as people, and no longer have to see themselves as pariahs of the world.

[...] with evidence mounting that the increased contacts provided by the enclaves are bringing about even small changes, a few once stolid critics have come out in support of the South’s engagement policy. [...] “When North and South Koreans can interact on a daily basis, it is a chance for the North Koreans to see with their eyes that their own propaganda doesn’t make sense.”

I was most fascinated a few months ago when the New York Philharmonic, with Lorin Maazel at the helm, journeyed to Pyongyang and performed there. The resulting concert was filmed, and it is one of the few classical concert films I can see myself owning for that reason. I hope there is at least as much footage of the audience as there is of the performers.