SOUTH KOREA: It sounds like an unlikely, bad-taste premise for a musical: a love story set in a North Korean gulag where emaciated inmates and goose-stepping guards burst into arias like All I want is Rice and You are just like Germs.
But Yoduk Story has been packing in the audiences since opening in the South Korean capital, Seoul, two weeks ago, despite graphic depictions of deprivation and torture, including an already notorious hand-amputation scene.
The landmark drama has stirred debate in a country where popular culture has rarely tackled such topics.
Set in the infamous Yodok camp, home to an estimated 20,000 people about 110km (70 miles) north of Pyongyang, the play tells the story of a North Korean actress imprisoned after her father is falsely accused of spying for the South.
The woman is raped by a guard who later turns protector to her and their baby, with help from inmates. The gesture, symbolising reconciliation on the divided Korean peninsula, ends when the guards crush the rebellion.
Implausible as it sounds, the makers say the play is based on fact and enriched by the experiences of many involved in the production - seven of the 30 performers are defectors from the North, as is director Jung Sung-San.
Jung says he escaped to Seoul in 1995 after being imprisoned for tuning in to South Korean radio. When he later went public about his life in the reclusive Stalinist state, the 38-year-old director claims his father was stoned to death in another North Korea camp in retaliation.
"I sometimes wake up crying for my father," he told the Korea Times, adding that he had dedicated the play to his dead parents and wanted it - the first of a four- part series - to be a "cultural nuke bomb to dissolve the camps".
Estimates put the number of prisoners in North Korean camps at 200,000, although Jung claims it is as high as 300,000.
Defectors have told stories of forced abortions, starvation and collective punishments. Yoduk Story depicts rag-doll prisoners surviving on rice and salt, and guards stoning inmates to save bullets.
The musical struggled into life in mid- March after a difficult conception, reportedly marred by financial troubles, intimidation and death threats. Two venues and several financial backers pulled out and anonymous telephone callers told Jung he would die.
The cast members claim South Korean security officials tried to shut them down because they feared Yoduk Story would anger Pyongyang. Since Seoul began a policy of gradual détente with the North in 2000, critics have accused the government and the media of playing down Pyongyang's human rights abuses.
Jung barely managed to raise the play's 700 million won (about €600,000) production costs with the help of donations from ordinary people. He claims he got the last 20 million won (€17,000) from loan sharks who demanded a kidney as collateral.
The success of the play means he will probably get to keep the kidney.
Overwhelmed by inquiries from abroad, the producers have provided subtitles for foreigners and an English outline on the play's website (www.yodukstory.com). The tagline reads: "If their running tears can become meats [sic] they will cry and when they finish crying they will be full."
The play runs until April 2nd before going to Europe to play in Norway and Poland.
"It's not a political play," Jung told an incredulous Korean reporter recently. "We just want to let people know about human rights abuses in North Korea."