rock music diplomacy

Each autumn, tens of thousands of young people get ready to take part in We Day, a series of rock concerts and speaking events designed to inspire social change. Targeted at youth, We Day takes students out of their school environment with a goal to mobilize the audience as “change-makers.” In the We Day philosophy, we all want to create change in the world – we just need a kickstart and to be taken out of our everyday lives, to be energized by 20,000 other people in a large stadium full of inspiring people and celebrities.

This month’s concerts have been made possible thanks to organizer Morten Traavik, a trusted figure in the area of cultural exchange as far as Pyongyang is concerned. He told local news agency Yonhap that the band can draw on the division of their homeland Yugoslavia in understanding sentiment towards the separation of the Koreas at the close of Tokyo’s colonial rule.