Yodok Stories

Today, more than 200.000 men, women and children are locked up in North Korea’s concentration camps. Systematic torture, starvation and murder is what faces the inmates. Few survive many years in the camps, but the population is kept stable by a steady influx of new persons considered to be ‘class enemies’. A small group of people have managed to flee from the camps to a new life in the prosperous South Korea. Some of them gather and decide to make an extraordinary and controversial musical about their experiences in the Yodok concentration camp. Despite death treats and many obstacles the musical becomes a tour de force for this ensemble of refugees and for them a possibility opens to talk about their experiences and inspire others to protest the existence of the camps.