North Korea ? The largest contingent of Americans to visit North Korea since the Korean War heads today into the heart of the country, often considered the most closed society in the world, as the New York Philharmonic brings its delegation of musicians, technicians and others for a highly unusual concert hosted by secretive leader Kim Jong Il.

The regime has agreed to broadcast Tuesday’s concert. Such a live national telecast has never before occurred under the communist regime, Korea watchers say.

Some said North Korea’s invitation to the orchestra may have been designed to boost Kim politically.

“As far as they are concerned, any visit to Pyongyang by a foreign delegation is a tributary visit, and they see the orchestra as being sent by the Bush administration,” said Brian Myers, a North Korea scholar at Dongseo University in South Korea. “The North Korean media will portray this as an acknowledgment that ‘we are a nuclear nation and the Americans are coming to honor us.”‘