*SEOUL — Perhaps not since Mel Brooks conceived “Springtime for Hitler” in the comedy “The Producers” has there been such an unlikely premise for a musical.
Chorus lines of goose-stepping soldiers and emaciated political prisoners will prance across the stage when “Yoduk Story,” a tear-jerker about a North Korean concentration camp whose name has the resonance of Auschwitz for some Koreans, opens here next month.
Among the catchy tunes that South Korean theatergoers might soon be humming are “If I Could Walk Freely” and “All I Want Is Rice.”
The tragedy of the divided peninsula is, not surprisingly, a familiar theme in South Korean popular culture. But the most successful offerings have been thrillers and spy flicks, an occasional shoot-'em-up war movie or a syrupy drama about separated families. Few have dared tackle the harsher realities of North Korea, such as starvation or human rights abuses.
And certainly not in the form of a musical.
“Yoduk Story” is the brainchild of Jung Sung San, a 37-year-old North Korean director who defected to the South in 1994. It hasn’t been easy bringing his labor of love to the stage. At one point, Jung was so short of money to pay the 80 members of the cast and crew that he pledged a kidney as collateral to borrow $20,000 from a loan shark. (He says he will have to donate the organ in April if he doesn’t pay back the loan.)
Two theaters refused to put the musical on their stage. Jung says he has received threatening anonymous telephone calls as well as official complaints from the South Korean government that the content could impair reconciliation efforts with North Korea.
“This government is not interested in hearing bad things about North Korea,” Jung said.
But the biggest problem for Jung might be South Korean audiences. The musicals that are popular here at the moment are lighter fare, most of them adaptations from Broadway. On the marquees are Korean-language versions of “Grease” and “The Producers,” in which an impresario trying to lose money decides that a musical about Adolf Hitler will be a sure-fire flop — only to come up with an inadvertent hit.
“Koreans love musicals, but they come to enjoy themselves and to relax,” said Kim Jung Han, a New York-educated theater student who plays a North Korean guard in “Yoduk Story.”
“This one is kind of heavy.”
Director Jung rejects such downbeat thinking. He envisions “Yoduk Story” as a Korean version of “Les Miserables.”
“Even a dark and tragic story can be beautiful,” he said…*
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I think the South Park crew got there first – Kim Jong Il singing in “Team America.”