Over on NPR’s terrific new Mixed Signals blog, NPR News producer and blog host JJ Sutherland writes:
Okay, you’ve just escaped North Korea. You were held there for years in the gulag of prison camps. Your only crime? Listening to South Korean radio about the death of Kim Il Sung. But you’re out now. You’ve made it to freedom. What do you do? Why, put on a musical, of course. Director Jung Sung San’s musical, Yodok Story just opened in Seoul. It deals with rape, beatings, murder… great family fare, no?
Audiences have been stunned. Apparently the South Korean media doesn’t like to talk too much about what is going on in its neighbor to the north. The South Korean government is attempting reconciliation with the North and doesn’t exactly want to shine a bright light on Kim Jong Il’s little peccadilloes that keep an estimated 400,000 people in the gulag.
Oh, and the director, he had to put up his kidney as collateral to put the show on. If he can pay them back by next month, it won’t be removed.
Link. Louisa Lim’s radio report airs tonight on All Things Considered. Image: Louisa Lim.