N Korea prison camp makes a musical

Seoul, Mar 15: As far as musicals go, seeing people break into song on subjects such as starvation and public executions in North Korea may be one of the most unlikely concepts for stage entertainment in several years.

Producers held a preview in Seoul yesterday of the musical called ''Yoduk Story'' that features goose-stepping North Korean soldiers and deprived prisoners wondering if they can survive into the next day.

The musical is about a North Korean woman's fall from a dancing revolutionary hero to a tortured inmate along with her family at Yoduk prison camp, where she bears a guard's child, and learns to forgive her brutal captors.

The production is meant to be an irony-free look at life in a North Korean prison camp that could change the way the North is depicted in South Korean entertainment.

Songs in the musical include ''You are just like germs'' and ''All I want is rice''. The producers hope audiences can find beauty in the misery of life in the prison camps.

Some of South Korea's top movies have been spy thrillers where agents from the two Koreas overlook their political differences and begin to bond, or sentimental stories about families ripped apart by the political divide.

But ''Yoduk Story'' writer, director and North Korean refugee Jung Sung-san says South Korean audiences have never really gotten a taste of the atrocities committed at the notorious political prisons in the North he was lucky enough to escape after three months.

''This is not somebody else's business. This is happening just a few hours from here,'' Jung told reporters. ''We want to convey the reality of what is happening.'' Washington and human rights groups accuse North Korea of having one of the worst records on human rights in the world with a network of political prison camps, guilt by association and public executions to intimidate the masses.

Rights groups have criticised South Korea for not pressing North Korea hard enough on human rights, while Seoul said it prefers quiet diplomacy with the North on the sensitive subject.

The show opens to the public today for a 19-day run.

Jung, who said he put one of his kidneys up for collateral to borrow money from a loan shark to stage the 700-million won (714,000 dollars) production, believes he can make enough money to repay the debt and pay the cast and crew.

''It has been really hard and lonely,'' he said, adding he hopes to take the story to film when the musical's run ends.

Jung, 37, from a relatively privileged background, was arrested for listening to a South Korean broadcast on the radio, a minor infraction for people in his class, but discipline had been tightened after the unexpected death of the communist leader, Kim Il-sung, in 1994.

Jung said the South Korean government did not try to hide its unease about the production, at one point sending out agents to try to coerce him into abandoning the project.

South Korean officials have said Jung has the right to free speech and they do not censor theatrical productions.

South Korea has seen its ties with the North improve rapidly since a unprecedented and unrepeated summit of the two Korea's leaders in 2000.

Pyongyang also reacts angrily to any charges of human rights violations. Yesterday, its foreign ministry spokesman called US criticism of its human rights record part of ''a smear campaign,'' and vowed to step up its military-first policy, saying ''human rights precisely mean sovereignty".

Reuters