Park Ji-won is a writer for The Korea Times who has been covering a wide range of topics from Korea’s culture to its politics. An avid journalism enthusiast to the core, Ji-won brings a thoughtful and unique perspective to every topic she covers. On weekends, you'll often find her contemplating life’s purpose on a yoga mat — with a cup of quality tea in hand. A native Korean speaker by birth and fluent in English through her work, she went to college in Japan and is learning Chinese and French — hoping to add Polish, Russian and Thai to the mix.
Plays, performances on labor issues hit stages
“Sweat,” performed by the National Theater Company of Korea (NTCK) / Courtesy of NTCK
By Park Ji-won
By Park Ji-won
A series of plays and dance performances focusing on the lives and deaths of factory workers are running in local theaters in June and July.
The musical, “1976 Harlan County,” which runs from May 28 to July 4 at the Chungmu Arts Center, revolves around miners in the United States who went on strike against their employer in 1973. The piece is inspired by the Oscar-winning documentary film, “Harlan County, USA,” which was released in 1976.
Director Yoo Byung-eun said, “I wrote the first edition of this work in 2016. As a father raising children, I started to write the script while thinking about how to express the tragedy of the Sewol ferry disaster.”
The National Theater Company of Korea (NTCK) will perform “Sweat,” a play written by Lynn Nottage that won the Pulitzer Prize in 2017. It won the prestigious award for its nuanced depiction of hardships facing factory workers who continue to strive for the American dream, according to the prize giver. Its plot summary reads, “A group of friends have spent their lives sharing drinks, secrets, and laughs while working together on the factory floor. But when picket lines chip away at their trust, and union jobs and factory machinery can disappear overnight, the friends find themselves pitted against each other in a gut-wrenching fight to stay afloat.”
The NTCK selected the piece as part of its effort to introduce trending and quality plays in Korea, it said in a press release, while aiming to keep an eye on concurrent social issues such as labor, gender and racial discrimination and economic inequality in hopes of supporting debate around the subjects.
Director Ahn Kyung-mo said, “The work is talking about human dignity beyond the subjects of labor and racial discrimination. I would like to question whether we are working simply for money. Also, I wanted to show how human dignity can be damaged after losing work, while talking about the possibility of coming together with others in those extreme situations.”
“7 Minutes,” or “Sette Minuti” in Italian, a play written by Stefano Massini, will be performed by art troupe Watchman at Art One Theater from June 16 to 27. The work was inspired by a true story that occurred in France in 2012 where a dozen or so workers were facing fates parallel to that of a factory about to be taken over by a textile multinational. A film with the same title was also made in 2016. The play revolves around seven factory employees who are tasked with voting at the request of the new company on the behalf of other employees. Eleven actors perform the textile factory employee roles throughout the show without leaving the stage.
Theater Company Gorae will also premier, “Waiting for Chimney,” a play based on the true story of FineTek workers who held a “chimney protest” atop a 75-meter smokestack for 426 days in 2018, the longest sit-in in history, calling for job security against the display equipment company's layoff plan. The title was inspired by Samuel Beckett's play, “Waiting for Godot.”
“Waiting for Chimney,” which will be performed at Theater Yeonwoo from June 10 to 27, revisits the life of factory workers as well as the value of labor which has been replaced by machines in Korean society.
“Trigger,” a play inspired by a poem by Geppetto, who is famous for leaving poems on online commentary sections, is about a young worker who died when he fell into a five-meter-high melting blast furnace after taking the wrong step in the factory where he worked in Dangjin, South Chungcheong Province in 2010. The poem drew huge popularity online and made the poet and the incident famous. The play will be performed at Theater Kum from July 7 to 18.
"A Seventh Man," a dance piece by choreographer Jung Young-doo that deals with the issues around migrant workers, has been performed again, 11 years following its creation in 2010. It started its tour from LG Arts Center (June 4-5) and it will go to Goyang Aram Nuri Arts Center (June 11-12) and Guri Arts Hall (June 18-19).
The work, inspired by the book with the same title, "A Seventh Man," (1975) by John Berger and Jean Mohr about the lives of migrant workers in Europe, explores the movements of people and their emotions working and living in other parts of the world.