[USFK Forums] S. Korean musical casts light on N. Korea's notorious prison camps [AP]

[C. Y. Lee]

Uploaded by C. Y. Lee on Monday, March 6, 2006

South Korean musical casts light on North Korea's notorious prison camps

Monday, March 06, 2006
By Bo-Mi Lim, The Associated Press

SEOUL, South Korea -- Soldiers dance across the stage calling for death to traitors in a South Korean musical that brings an unlikely subject under the theatrical spotlight: prison camps in communist North Korea.

"Yoduk Story" has drawn attention -- as well as alleged threats demanding the show's cancellation -- even before its scheduled premiere later this month. The show's theme is sensitive here because the South's government, seeking to reconcile with its longtime foe, has lately avoided talking about the horrors of Kim Jong Il's North Korean regime.

The musical, written and directed by a defector who says his father was killed in a prison camp, tells the tragic love story of a female inmate and a prison guard and is set in Yodok, the more common spelling of the musical's "Yoduk" and site of an actual camp about 110 kilometers (70 miles) northeast of Pyongyang.

More than a simple and highly implausible love story, the musical offers a glimpse into the gulags in North Korea, where the U.S. State Department estimates 150,000 to 200,000 political prisoners are being held.

According to a group run by prominent defector Kang Chol Hwan, many North Korean prisoners die from malnutrition or diseases like pneumonia and tuberculosis and must toil each day for over 15 hours and survive on just 350-500 grams (12-17 ounces) of corn and salt.

Jung Sung San, the show's writer-director, told The Associated Press in an interview that he wanted to highlight the human rights situation in the North "through the lives of people who die miserably for crimes that are not really crimes."

"There are still so many people dying in North Korea's prison camps," said Mr. Jung, who defected to the South in 1995 after he was jailed for secretly listening to South Korean broadcasts and managed to escape when a truck transporting him between prison camps overturned. He made his way to the South through China. Getting his message out was harder than Mr. Jung had expected.

Some investors pulled out of the project, and a theater canceled a planned staging of the show at the last minute. To help finance the project, Mr. Jung said he even had to offer his left kidney as collateral for a black-market loan -- an illegal and highly unusual action -- and would have to give up the organ if he can't pay back the borrowed 20 million won (US$20,600) next month.

Mr. Jung said the biggest obstacle came from South Korean government officials, whom he claims threatened to cancel the show and demanded changes in its depiction of North Korean life. The government denies Mr. Jung's allegations of harassment.

"We have called all related government offices, but confirmed no official made contacts" with Mr. Jung, said Cho Yong-sik of the Unification Ministry, which deals with North Korean affairs. "A performance is an expression of art and we have no reason to interfere."

Still, the musical's criticism of the North hits a raw nerve for the South Korean government, which is regularly accused of keeping silent on North Korea's dire human rights situation to help push along reconciliation with the North. Seoul has in recent years abstained on U.N. resolutions criticizing the North's rights policies.

Mr. Jung, 38, is determined the show will go on -- complete with a portrait of North Korea's founding ruler Kim Il Sung and its flag, both of which are normally prohibited here under a law that bans supporting or praising the communist North.

Through the life of the main female character -- a renowned dancer jailed after her father is accused of spying -- the story also illustrates the stark contrast between the extravagant lives of the North's elite class and the harsh conditions faced by prisoners.

In a basement rehearsal room in Seoul, actors and actresses dance to the tunes whose words depict the realities of life in the North. "Never leak a word of complaint. Whisper, whisper, always watch your mouth," they sing in one scene as they watch the dancer taken away to prison.

A few scenes later, the actors and actresses call for death to traitors, belting out: "Don't even waste stones on them! Beat them to death with a stick!"

Mr. Jung said he began writing the musical when he heard his father had been beaten to death at a prison camp in 2001 because of his son's work on South Korean movies and plays critical of the North's leadership.

Mr. Jung said he tried to kill himself -- he shows scars on his left wrist as testimony -- after hearing the news but then realized that his father's death represented something beyond his personal mourning.

"It wasn't simply my sorrow, but the sorrow of the Korean people," he said. "I felt a sense of duty that I should help eradicate this pain, this sorrow."

The curtain falls on "Yoduk Story" with the spotlight on a child born to the guard and prisoner, symbolizing forgiveness, according to Mr. Jung.

"To Kim Jong Il, I want to say it's about time he forgive all his prisoners," Mr. Jung said. "I think I can now forgive Kim Jong Il."



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