Donald Gregg, former ambassador to South Korea, said he attended Tuesday's concert a day after talks with North Korea's main nuclear negotiator Kim Kye Gwan. He said he and former U.S. Defense Secretary William Perry tried to convince Kim that Pyongyang was running out of time.

Kim took "seriously" their appeal that it was in the North's best interest to finish the denuclearization process while U.S. President George W. Bush is in office, Gregg said.

The expert on Korea also noted the "wonderful" concert came as South Korea's new President Lee Myung-bak took office Monday with an offer to make the impoverished North richer if it gives up nuclear programs.

The concert provided a "very, very memorable day in relations between the United States and North Korea," the former diplomat said during a breakfast meeting of the American Chamber of Commerce in Korea.

"And I think in the long-run, we will be able to say that the concert ... contributed to the eventual improvement and change of direction in relations between Washington and Pyongyang and between Pyongyang and Seoul," he said.

The Philharmonic was the first major American cultural group to perform in the country and brought the largest-ever delegation from the United States to visit its longtime foe. The two nations fought in the 1950-53 Korean War that ended in a cease-fire, not a peace treaty, which means they are still technically at war.

The concert was set up when optimism about the nuclear standoff was high last year with the North shutting down its sole operational nuclear reactor and beginning to disable it. But the process has reached a deadlock as Washington accuses Pyongyang of not fully disclosing its nuclear programs.

The oldest U.S. orchestra arrived in Seoul on Wednesday after a 48-hour stay in Pyongyang. It was scheduled to play a concert in the South's capital on Thursday.

U.S. Ambassador to Seoul Alexander Vershbow said the U.S. was "able to make some kind of connection with North Korea" through music, although the concert did not "change the system and the fundamental nature of the problems we're facing."

"The North Korean people, including those in the elite, they've seen the possibility of a different relationship with the United States," the envoy said before the Philharmonic's concert in Seoul.

Evans Revere, a former deputy U.S. ambassador in Seoul who traveled together with Gregg to the North, said it was an "overwhelming" experience to see the concert where the U.S. national flag was displayed and its national anthem was played in a country that inculcates its people with hatred of the U.S.

The event was broadcast live in the North, and what the people there saw during the concert "was a very different face of America and a face that contrasts significantly with the one that they have been talked about for over half a century," Revere said. "And I think it's important to think about the implications of that."

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