As far as musicals go, seeing people break into song on subjects such as starvation and public executions in North Korea may be one of the most unlikely concepts for stage entertainment in several years. Producers held a preview in Seoul on Tuesday of the musical called "Yoduk Story" that features goose-stepping North Korean soldiers and deprived prisoners wondering if they can survive into the next day.The musical is about a North Korean woman's fall from a dancing revolutionary hero to a tortured inmate along with her family at Yoduk prison camp, where she bears a guard's child, and learns to forgive her brutal captors. Songs in the musical include "You are just like germs" and "All I want is rice". The producers hope audiences can find beauty in the misery of life in the prison camps.
Some of South Korea's top movies have been spy thrillers where agents from the two Koreas overlook their political differences and begin to bond, or sentimental stories about families ripped apart by the political divide. But "Yoduk Story" writer, director and North Korean refugee Jung Sung-san says South Korean audiences have never really gotten a taste of the atrocities committed at the notorious political prisons in the North he was lucky enough to escape after three months. "This is not somebody else's business. This is happening just a few hours from here," Jung told reporters. "We want to convey the reality of what is happening."
Rights groups have criticized South Korea for not pressing North Korea hard enough on human rights, while Seoul said it prefers
The show opens to the public on Wednesday for a 19-day run. Jung, who said he put one of his kidneys up for collateral to borrow money from a loan shark to stage the 700-million won ($714,000) production, believes he can make enough money to repay the debt and pay the cast and crew.
Hmm...Alan Rickman doesn't believe in "My Name is Rachel Corrie" that much....freakin' wuss.
Jung, 37, from a relatively privileged background, was arrested for listening to a South Korean broadcast on the radio, a minor infraction for people in his class, but discipline had been tightened after the unexpected death of the communist leader, Kim Il-sung, in 1994. Jung said the South Korean government did not try to hide its unease about the production, at one point sending out agents to try to coerce him into abandoning the project.
The guy put up a kidney as collateral to a loan shark....and they think "friendly persuasion" is going to make him change his mind?
South Korean officials have said Jung has the right to free speech and they do not censor theatrical productions. South Korea has seen its ties with the North improve rapidly since a unprecedented and unrepeated summit of the two Korea's leaders in 2000.
