Drama in real life

For Yoduk Story’s director and crew the stage is both the stuff of dreams and of deadly reality for those stuck in North Korea’s prison camps | Priya Abraham

To write Yoduk Story, a sorrowful musical about a North Korean prison camp, Jung Sun San drew from his own sorrows as an accused traitor and defector. The director of the new production lost his own parents, suffered torture, and eventually wound up a homeless man in China.

The story follows the travails of prison camp inmates, earning it comparisons to Broadway's long-running Les Misérables, and centers on an actress and political prisoner raped by the prison's chief. When she becomes pregnant, he later relents and tries to help mother and newborn escape.

In an unusual alliance for the theater world, backing from U.S. human-rights groups such as Freedom House and the Defense Forum Foundation brought the production to Washington this month. The troupe will also appear in Los Angeles Oct. 19-22.