Audiences in Seoul face the music about North Korea

Officials have refused to see it, government-controlled TV has given it scant coverage, and its director and backers say they faced intimidation. Nonetheless, a new musical about love, torture, and survival in a North Korean prison camp has struck a chord here by offering a shocking glimpse into a system many South Koreans scarcely know and often ignore.

"Yoduk Story" takes its name from one of six major camps believed to hold some 200,000 political prisoners. The musical revolves around a dancer whose family winds up in Yoduk after falling from official grace. A cast of 40, including a chorus in prison garb and military uniforms, depicts an ill-fated love affair between the dancer and the camp's commander, who is condemned for the liaison. By the end, nearly everyone is killed except for their son, who is spirited to China.

"Please go to South Korea and tell the world about what it is like here," says the child, as the curtain descends to a standing ovation.

Telling the world "what it is like" motivated the director, a North Korean refugee, to press on with the production in the face of funding problems and a government that remains extremely uncomfortable with criticism of its northern neighbor.

Officials called asking the show not to go on, says director Jung Sung San, who escaped to China after leaping from a truck carrying him to prison in 1994. He had been sentenced to 13 years in jail for listening to South Korean music. "We got anonymous calls telling us not to do it. We toned it down and revised it a lot."

Prospects for the show dimmed in December when, according to Mr. Jung and others involved in the production, the original donors backed out under pressure, and the theater where it was to open refused to stage it.

Jung pulls out a frayed piece of paper marked with his thumbprint in blood, showing that he was willing to put up a kidney as collateral for a $20,000 loan. He's not sure he could have legally gone through with the gesture, but it convinced donors to come forth with half a million dollars.

The show finally opened March 15, after finding a new home at the Seoul Educational and Cultural Center, far from the center of town, but still spacious and modern enough to mount the production. The show's original run will wrap up this weekend, though it may be extended or play in other cities.

Jung flashes a fiery smile as he talks about trying to get the show staged overseas and made into a film here. "We know the actual situation in North Korea is 10 times worse," he says, who learned that his father was stoned to death in a public execution five years ago. "This is just like leaking the surface of a watermelon" - a Korean expression.

The reason for the government's nervousness about the show is that it counters the policy of avoiding any criticism of North Korea while pursuing reconciliation, trade, investment, and reunions of millions of families divided by the Korean War.

Government officials refuse to confirm or deny charges of pressure to ban the show. For the record, they say they have not seen it and are not interested in doing so.

Conservatives, however, have been lauding the work. The conservative Chosun Ilbo, Korea's largest-selling daily, has been unreserved in its praise, calling it "broad enough in its conception to appeal to everyone, especially the young."

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