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Opening the Curtains for Plays on the Korean Division

Park Jo-yeol was born as the eldest of seven children in Gihoe-ri, a clan village for the Park clan, in Hamgyeongnam-do. As a child, he was sickly but active, his keen mind establishing himself as a high-achieving student. He discovered the joys of reading plays in middle school when he was yet to attend a theatrical production and, after graduating from Hamheung High School, became a literature teacher at the age of 19. However, when the communists came into power, he ran into trouble because of his birth as the son of a landowner and his uncooperative attitude toward the party. In the Korean War, he was drafted into the military during the Heungnam Evacuation, becoming the only member of his family to go to South Korea at the age of 20. He spent the next 12 years of his life in the military, working as a teacher and writer.

After his discharge in 1963, he first joined the Drama Center’s Theater Academy as a researcher as the first step in his journey to understand South Korean society. This position at the Theater Academy led him to writing. His first work, “Tourist Zone” (1963), was not a product of the workshop at the theater—it was a piece he produced on the spot when inspiration struck him like lightning. Unlike the oral literature found in traditional theater, contemporary theater for Koreans began with dramaturgy as a written text, and realism remained the choice of the day until the 1960s. In contrast to this, Park Jo-yeol’s “Tourist Zone” found itself on the path of Korean postmodern theater, which began with Lee Gun-sam’s “Manuscript Paper” (1960). Most of the realistic plays back then focused on the tragic emotionality of Korean history at that time, marked by colonialism, division, and war, and Park Jo-yeol opened a new chapter in the history of our theater with the play “Tourist Zone,” following the examples of Oh Young-jin and Lee Gun-sam.

The play “Tourist Zone” has the subtitle “The Land Claim Case at Panmunjom,” and this land claim case is launched in the play by Private Han Nam-buk of the Korean Army, who claims that Panmunjom is the place where he had lived with his parents, in the run-up to an inter-Korean talk. That discussion, in turn, devolves into a petty squabble between the South and the North regarding an exchange of prisoners: a spy sent down South for the North and an ox that had wandered to the North for the South. Private Han recollects that the row of barbed wire at Panmunjom was precisely along the line drawn between his parents whenever they had a fight and that “the war between them tended to be over by the third day.” The stage becomes a place for satire, depicting the division of Korea and the injustice behind that in a comical manner. The image of Private Han’s parents reconciling after a dispute or Private Han’s land claim on Panmunjom being revealed to be coming from his dream to build a tourist hotel on the land alludes to the hope of reunification.

Park Jo-yeol’s debut piece premiered in a high school theater contest of that year and won the highest prize. It would stay in the repertoire of university students until the ’80s. Because Park’s writing began and ended with the theme of the division and reunification of Korea, Park opened the door to a new chapter of Korean theater that focuses on the reality of divided Korea.

The Womb of Dramaturgy

After completing his debut piece, Park Jo-yeol visited Panmunjom upon the recommendation of his friend, who had been working in the American embassy at that time.

The reason why it was Park Jo-yeol who opened the doors to the theater of division could be found in his identity as a displaced person born in North Korea. I met Park when we were recording the oral history of Korean theater back in 2010. When we asked for his input for the project, he told us he wouldn’t have much to offer, given that he didn’t create a lot of work. Indeed, he wrote 10 plays in total, which isn’t exactly a high number. However, Park was also the author of a large body of radio and TV pieces, as well as notable critiques whose presence can still be felt in the history of Korean theater. It turned out that he had a great deal to offer, and the recording session went on for 5 separate sessions, amounting to 13 hours in total length.

In his collection, Park said that his creations were “the product of my heart for my family in the North, whose survival I have no way of knowing, and the mountains and the streams of my hometown.” But during the recording session, we found out they were so much more than that. Why did Park Jo-yeol start writing? Why did he focus on the theme of Korean division and reunification? How was his work brought to a stop? The answers to these questions became clearer than ever. Up until the second recording session, his memories of his family and his hometown were brought into the present tense, and Park became ill from sleeplessness. Because of that, as long as the interview remained on the topic, I had to be the listener, and it was difficult to pose questions to him. The recording session made it evident that his longing for his family, the memory of his hometown, and the memory of the war and the division dominated his life. In the fifth recording session, he said the following:

His family marked both the start and the end of Park Jo-yeol’s writings. In 1991, he sought to write a tragedy that befell a family as a result of Korea’s division for the National Theater of Korea. But terrible news of his family’s suffering in the North reached him, and Park became ill for months. That pain ended up snuffing out his literary spark. Because the questions of Korea’s division and the reunification were contemporaneous and heartfelt issues in Park’s life that shaped his identity as a writer, he dedicated his first collection (“Park Jo-yeol Collection: Soldier’s Mementos,” Hakgobang, 1991), published on his 60th year, to his family in the North.

“Boundaries” as Motifs and a New Format

The motif of “boundaries,” established with his debut work “Tourist Zone,” became a recurring one with the story of two lovers in “The Rabbit and the Hunter” (1964), followed by “A Dialogue Between Two Long-necked People” (1966).

This photo depicts the premiere performance of Park Jo-yeol’s debut work, “Tourist Zone.” Staged by the Joongdong High School’s Drama Club, it won the highest prize in the 3rd National High School Theater Contest hosted by the Drama Center in 1964.

“Tourist Zone” is a play written when Park was conceptualizing a longer novel about the Korean division. Back then, he had no idea who Brecht²⁾ was nor what epic theater meant, so he wrote what he wanted to express, which assumed the form of epic theater later on. But because it was produced in the 1960s amid significant tension between the two Koreas, depicted a subject deemed to be a societal taboo, and portrayed the American forces from a cynical perspective, “Tourist Zone” was investigated by intelligence authorities. This led to Park writing a love story in the form of “The Rabbit and the Hunter” (1964), which continued the motif of “boundaries” from the previous work. This piece became a smash hit at Minjung Theater Company under the direction of Kim Jeong-ok. “The Rabbit and the Hunter” won the Grand Award, Acting Award, and Drama Award at the Dong-A Theatre Award in 1965, establishing Park Jo-yeol as the man behind “The Rabbit and the Hunter” for the public. In fact, this was the first instance of a non-adaptation work winning a prize in the Dong-A Theatre Award, so with Park’s proposal, the Drama Award category was newly added to the Dong-A Theatre Award. This was also the time when Park Jo-yeol discovered his talent for dramaturgy.

“A Dialogue Between Two Long-necked People” is an absurdist and highly symbolic piece that uses metaphors and abstract expressions to depict the tragedy of Korean division.

The motif of “boundaries” returns in “A Dialogue Between Two Long-necked People” (1966) with an allegory³⁾ of Korean reunification. When the curtains are raised, A and B stand opposite each other, waiting for their respective captains. The captains are nowhere to be found, and Park uses that as an allegory of how there are no leaders on both sides of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) who will work toward reunification. A and B are joined by another figure, C, a seemingly genderless figure straddling the boundary between the two. Because of this, C can neither stand nor sit down. As a unified being that does not fit into any ideology, C is a personification of unification set adrift. In the piece, there is no event, only the waiting for reunification. In this way, it is a work of absurdist theater that is quite similar to Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” (1952). Park described the writing process as follows in the recording session. About halfway into the writing, he could not continue, so he showed the draft to Yoh Suk-kee. Yoh brought Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” (1952) to Park, who, after reading that, was able to finish writing in no time.

Then, Park Jo-yeol published “Mask and Truth” and “Is Cho Man-sik Still Alive?” in 1976. If Park had approached the issues of division and reunification indirectly in his earlier works, using satire, allegory, metaphors, and irony as his chosen methods, the two works of “Mask and Truth” and “Is Cho Man-sik Still Alive” approach the questions directly, using materials owned solely by the state as their basis and historical theater as their format. Both works were motivated by the July 4 South–North Joint Statement of 1972, the first joint statement on reunification between the two Koreas since the division, which, contrary to expectations, led to contentious rhetoric from both sides and escalated the conflict away from the vision of reunification. In other words, Park’s sincere hope and wish for reunification continued to motivate him to experiment with new formats and genres in dramaturgy.

Writing Comedically and Critically

For Park Jo-yeol, theater had to be fun above all others. Because of that, he found the realist dominance of that period, with its seriousness, tragic emotionality, and excessive focus on themes of the Enlightenment, to be boring and trite. His rejection of that was found in post-realist forms as well as the lighter, more comedic approach to his works. Before he became a writer, his favorite writer was George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950), another comedic, critical writer.

Preservation measures for the damaged handwritten first draft were carried out by the ACC in 2024.

In his writings, that comedic character appears through the paradoxical contrast in the title, the names, and the situations presented therein, titles like “Tourist Zone,” “Rabbit and the Hunter,” “Soldier’s Mementos,” and “Mask and Truth.” “Tourist Zone” contrasts the lightness of a tourist zone with the weight of Panmunjom through its subtitle, “The Land Claim Case at Panmunjom.” “Soldier’s Mementos” (original title “Oh Jang-gun’s Toenail”: “Jang-gun” is used both as a name and the Korean word for generals) contrasts the authority of a general with the insignificance of a toenail. “Mask and Truth” contrasts masks with truth, which can perhaps be said to be in opposition. The protagonist of “Tourist Zone” is named Han Nam-buk, a wordplay on the South (“Nam”) and the North (“Buk”) being one (“Han”). Oh Jang-gun in “Soldier’s Mementos,” as described by the bureaucrat C in the script, can be read as “Oh Jang-gun. Five (“Oh”) generals (“Jang-gun”). Five stars. He’s a five star …” As for situations, “Tourist Zone” has a scene where the protagonist Han Nam-buk describes the tragic death of his father, who was killed when he greeted a North Korean soldier with the words, “Hurrah for the South Korean army!” Park employs irony to connect the greeting offered by the protagonist’s father with his death in the greater context of the tragedy of a civil war, further instructing that the protagonist in the scene should deliver that tragic anecdote lightly, with “funny poses.” By doing so, Park adds a comedic element to the tragedy of the plot to serve as an ironic contrast.

After 14 years since its writing, “Soldier’s Mementos” premiered with Michu Theater Company. The scene depicts protagonist Oh Jang-gun receiving a draft notice.

In “Soldier’s Mementos,” the gentle and innocent farmer “Oh Jang-gun” is conscripted into the military after being mistaken for somebody else with the same name. Once in the military, he fails to adjust to military life, which brings one comical situation after another. That sense of innocence results in Oh being chosen as a clandestine operative, and after infiltrating the enemy lines, he is executed by a firing squad despite his flawless acting. Moments before his death, Oh exclaims, “(toward the heaven, with all his power) Mom, Kkot-bun, Meok-soe …” Three of his loved ones, which meant his world and everything to the simple farm boy. The enemy commander proclaims, “He was an actor, even unto death,” mimics his last words, and salutes. The soldiers follow suit. Again, Park Jo-yeol refuses to treat the protagonist’s tragic fate as a tragedy. He presents a contrast in the form of the enemy’s misplaced respect for Oh’s acting abilities, adding levity and, thus, contrast to the equation. That irony is what makes it comedic.

Irony in Park Jo-yeol’s drama shatters the illusion of comedy for the audience. At the same time, it also places the audience members in a position superior and distant to the characters on the stage. This allows the audience to look at the stage with a cool head and from a critical perspective. In other words, Park transforms the tragic character of the heavy subject matter of war and division into comedy through paradoxical contrasts, inviting the audience to ponder the issue instead of just feeling it through theater. This comedic approach to the tragedy of Korean division is the reason why his writings stand out in the history of Korean theater.

In September 1975, as it was being prepared to be staged by Jayu Theater Company, the staging of “Soldier’s Mementos” was prohibited by the Arts and Culture Ethics Committee (later Public Performance Ethics Committee). The rationale provided by the military dictatorship at the time was that the play portrayed the military in an unfavorable light. It would only premiere in 1988 under the direction of Son Jinchaek at Michu Theater Company. After its premiere, “Soldier’s Mementos” won the Grand Prize, Best Play, Best Direction, and Best Playwriting awards at the Baeksang Arts Awards. The pamphlet for the premiere bore Park Jo-yeol’s comments on the history of the play’s censorship. “What I found to be particularly unpleasant was the fact that the one who instigated the censorship of the works was a member of the theater community and that the theater community had responded with perfect silence regarding this issue. Because of that incident, I was elected as the head of the Dramaturg Committee in the Korean Theater Association, and that was why I started being active in the Anti–Public Performance Act movement.” ⁵⁾ Indeed, when the Dramaturg Committee was founded by the Korean Theater Association in February of 1986, Park was elected to head the committee. He then became the first person to raise questions about the constitutional legitimacy of the Public Performance Ethics Committee’s precensorship practices. The following May, he published an article called “Freedom of Expression: Its Limitations in the Present Situation and Means of Improvement” in The Korea Theater Magazine. The article immediately sparked a lively debate in the world of art and culture in Korea, particularly in theater. In 1988, Park published a seven-part series in The Korea Theater Magazine under the title “What is Freedom of Expression?” Park’s writing on the freedom of expression was the first, and for some time, the only piece of critique opposing the Public Performance Act and the practice of precensorship. Precensorship of performance script, enacted on December 31, 1961, was abolished on January 1, 1989. Korean theater history had omitted Park’s public discussion for freedom of expression and the struggle to abolish the Public Performance Act until the 21st century when his struggle was briefly mentioned in Chapter 8, “Critique,” of “100 Years of Korean Modern and Contemporary Theater” (Jipmundang, 2009).

“What Is More Interesting to a Human Being than Humans?” ⁶⁾

In 2015, Park Jo-yeol donated materials, including the first draft of his plays, to the National Asian Culture Center (ACC). This collection of materials on Park Jo-yeol’s work served as the basis of the exhibition “Park Jo-yeol and Soldier’s Mementos,” which will be hosted in Special Exhibition Room 2 of Asia Culture Museum until March 23, 2025. The exhibition details Park Jo-yeol’s life and work.

The exhibition “Park Jo-yeol and Soldier’s Mementos” includes hologram content jointly produced by the ACC and the National Theater Company of Korea. Actors from the National Theater Company of Korea act out the lines from “Soldier’s Mementos.” (Produced by: ACC Jang Hyeon-hee, Kim Nam-gyun)

From early on, Park Jo-yeol demonstrated that he was not swayed by mainstream trends. When he was a boy, he had an anti-imperialist attitude toward the Japanese occupation. In North Korea, he raised trouble by being uncooperative toward the Party. When he became a writer, he served as the forerunner of post-realism and pioneered new formats of writing. With his unwavering stance and sharp, critical observation, he critiqued Oh Young-jin, a prominent writer in his day, and the nationalism inherent in his work. As a writer, Park Jo-yeol sought to show humans through his work. For him, “human beings are the only material, life, and salvation of dramaturgs and theater,” and theater is the most “human art” that shows who humans are. In his works, we meet people who are the most human, given shape as non-comedic forms. I am thankful that such a writer as Park Jo-yeol existed in the history of Korean theater.

Written by Lee In-soon

Lee In-soon majored in theater and minored in German literature and philosophy at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany, where she earned an MA in theater studies and a PhD in dramaturgy and performance analysis. As a dramaturg and theater critic, Lee was involved in interview projects on the history of Korean theater. Her published works include the “Director, Theater, and Dramaturgy” (Prun Sasang, 2023).