Most unknown playwrights have difficulty raising money to put on a show. But most don’t go so far as putting up their own kidney for collateral on a loan. But a man named Jung Sung-San—a defector from North Korea—did just that.The musical he created—the “Yoduk Story”—portrays the real-life suffering of 200,000 North Koreans languishing in prison camps. It’s a mixture of music and misery, torture and truth—and it’s an example of how to drop an artistic nuclear bomb on an evil regime.
Tragically, Jung did not have to research the subject matter: He himself endured life in a North Korean gulag. His crime? Listening to a South Korean radio broadcast. Guards beat him unconscious and pushed bamboo sticks under his fingernails. Jung escaped into China and made his way to South Korea, where he studied film and theater. It was there he learned his father had been murdered—a brutal payback for Jung’s own escape. In response, Jung began writing his musical.