Often found at theaters and museums, Kwon Mee-yoo has covered a wide range of cultural fields from K-pop and dramas to theater and fine art for over a decade. Now as K-Culture Desk editor, she tries to connect Korean culture with global readers through fresh perspectives.
Chunhyang in red mini dress
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Min Eun-kyeong, front, plays Chunhyang in “changgeuk” (Korean traditional opera) “Different Chunhyang,” directed by Andrei Serban and staged at Daloreum Theater of National Theater of Korea in central Seoul. / Courtesy of National Changgeuk Company of Korea
By Kwon Mee-yoo
By Kwon Mee-yoo
All of Korea knows the tale of Chunhyang, a chaste woman who endured imprisonment to defend her love. This love story seeks modern transformation through a blue-eyed director who saw a dignified woman who fought for social justice in Chunhyang.
The National Changgeuk Company of Korea (NCCK)’s “Different Chunhyang” is directed by Andrei Serban, a Romanian-born American theater director. The 71-year-old director put a modern spin to the story by bringing them to the 21st century and focuses on Chunhyang’s struggle against the immorality.
“Changgeuk” is Korean traditional opera, budded off from “pansori,” Korean traditional one-person opera. “Chunhyang-ga” is one of the remaining five pansori pieces in Korea and the most popular one among them.
This is the second in the NCCK’s Changgeuk of World Master’s Choice series, following German director Achim Freyer’s “Mr. Rabbit and the Dragon King” in 2011. Freyer’s rendition of “Sugung-ga” received favorable reviews for its novelty and the NCCK invited another internationally noted director to take on the age-old love story.
Serban was first suggested to direct “Heungbu-ga,” a tale of a poor but good man with many children, but the director switched to “Chunhyang-ga,” fascinated by Chunhyang’s uprightness fighting against repressive society to defend her love.
The changgeuk follows the plot of traditional Chunhyang-ga, but Serban interpreted characters differently. Unlike the original 18th century love story, Chunhyang plays on the swing in modernized hanbok and sparkly sneakers and Mongryong is portrayed as a university student working on homework with his MacBook laptop and enjoying clubbing, who wants to become a politician.
Mongryong, son of Namwon Governor falls in love with Chunhyang at first sight and marries her, but has to move away as his father gets promoted. Chunhyang waits for her husband to return, but she faces the new Governor Byeon instead.
Governor Byeon is described as a corrupt politician, who remotely reminds of North Korean dictatorship. He imprisons Chunhyang for treason and defamation when she refuses to sleep with him.
Prosecutors charge Chunhyang for violating the ultimate national authority and Byeon, the person who represents it and Chunhyang resists the claim, saying what the punishment for raping a married woman is.
Vivid, graphic description of Chunhyang being flogged is one of the highlights in the performance, revealing the violence of astray state power. She falls into water as the club brandishes and later covered in red water symbolizing blood.
Serban maintained all traditional songs as they are in archaic words, but all other lines are in modern Korean, which creates a collision. The director also picked smaller 500-seat Daloreum Theater of National Theater of Korea, instead of its main 3,000-seat Haeoreum Theater, to be more intimate with the audience.
Costume and set designed by Anka Lupes infused new life into Chunhyang and Mongryong with contemporariness. Chunhyang wears black and pink modernized hanbok showing her bubbly character at first and later changes into red cone bra shaped bust and mini skirt when she is tortured by Governor Byeon. In the second act, she is in orange prison uniform and plaster cast with pale face, a living evidence of the struggle against unfair public power.
In the final scene, Serban asks a series of questions that no Koreans ever thought of — what will happen to Mongryong, who had forgotten Chunhyang for years and now obtained a footing in the political world for his successful secret inspection on Byeon’s corruption? Chunhyang, despite winning back of her love, still never smiles but remains impassive in a wheelchair until the curtain falls.
“A Different Chunhyang” runs through Dec. 6. Min Eun-kyeong, Jeong Eun-hye and Lee So-yeon alternate the role of Chunhyang. The changgeuk is performed in Korean with Korean and English subtitles. Tickets cost from 20,000 to 50,000 won. For more information, visit www.ntok.go.kr or call 02-2280-4114.