Hello, Pyongyang: Are. You. Ready. To. Rock.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/21/world/asia/laibach-concert-in-pyongyang-north-korea.html

Version 0 of 1.

A “Sound of Music” medley. A cover of the Beatles’ “Across the Universe.” A martial-sounding version of the arena rock anthem “The Final Countdown.”

A concert in Pyongyang on Wednesday by Laibach, an industrial rock band from Slovenia, was billed as the first live performance by a Western pop act in North Korea. And it left the audience with an eclectic view of just what makes a rock show.

Laibach, which was formed in 1980 in what was then Yugoslavia, is known for embracing fascist imagery in its costumes and videos, but with a wink that signals parody. “We are fascists as much as Hitler was a painter,” members said in an early 1980s interview.

The band played at the Ponghwa Art Theater to a capacity crowd of more than 1,000 people. Several dozen foreigners were in attendance, including some Laibach fans who had come to the North Korean capital specifically for the show.

But to most, it was an entirely new experience. In video clips from the concert, the audience watches passively and applauds politely between songs.

“There are all kinds of music,” the BBC quoted one attendee as saying afterward. “Now we know that there’s this kind of music, too.”

Laibach’s concerts in Pyongyang — another is scheduled for Thursday — are part of North Korea’s celebrations to commemorate the end of World War II and Japanese colonial rule. The official news media gave the Wednesday show a nod of approval.

“Performers showed well the artistic skill of the band through peculiar singing, rich voice and skilled rendition,” reported KCNA, North Korea’s state-run news service.

Morten Traavik, a Norwegian director who organized the band’s performances, said that the false impressions surrounding Laibach made the group a good fit to play in the authoritarian state.

“North Korea is portrayed in the West as the world’s most closed country, but in fact it is more open to the outside world than the prevailing media narrative suggests,” Mr. Traavik told the BBC.

“Both the country and the band have been portrayed by some as fascist outcasts,” he said. “The truth is that both are misunderstood.”

Mr. Traavik, who in 2012 uploaded a video of young North Korean accordion players performing A-ha’s “Take On Me” that became an Internet hit, described the Laibach tour as a first by a foreign band. (At least one other foreign ensemble has performed in North Korea, the New York Philharmonic, in 2008.)

The Laibach performance drew attention from North Korea watchers, in part because of the group’s use of political imagery. In their Wednesday show, band members wore the Mao-style “people’s suit” favored by North Korean officials including Kim Jong-un, the country’s supreme leader.

Foreign pop music is not entirely unknown in North Korea. Karaoke parlors in Pyongyang, especially those at hotels with foreign visitors, feature long lists of Western songs. A steady influx of Western and South Korean movies and music videos have also infiltrated North Korea, with CDs and computer memory sticks containing the prohibited materials available on the black market.

Still, a performance by a Western rock band at a major concert hall in Pyongyang may have been a cultural shock for even those North Korean elites privileged enough to live in the showcase capital. Since taking power, Mr. Kim, who studied in Switzerland as a teenager, has tried to project the image of a fun-loving young leader open-minded enough to embrace some outside influence.

In 2012, he and his wife, who typically dresses in what look like Western designer suits, attended a domestic rock concert featuring young women in miniskirts, Mickey and Minnie Mouse characters and the theme song from the “Rocky” movies.