Why I came to Korea from Japan, a novel about Yun Dong Ju in Fukuoka Prison, <The Investigation>

▲  A scene from the play 'The Investigation'
ⓒ Kookmin University Innovation Promotion Center

I was surprised to see the poet Yun Dong Ju as a woman when I saw the play 'The Investigation' As the play was staged by university students as part of a class, I assumed that there would be gender restrictions on the roles. Even so, there were no male actors on stage, and the attempt to cast the main character, Yun Dong Ju, as a woman was enough to surprise the audience.

However, after an awkward and questionable first appearance, as the play progressed, Yun Dong Ju, played by college actress Kwon Yeon Ji, quickly became convincing enough to be a woman.

On my way out of the theater, I received a group text asking me to fill out an online survey. The first question read. "This performance was gender-free (casting not limited to the gender of the characters). Did you experience any problems caused by the difference between the gender of the characters and the gender of the actors, or was it not a problem?"

A play adapted by a Japanese playwright becomes the first student production to be staged in Korea

'The Investigation' is based on the 2012 novel "The Investigation" by Lee Jung Myung, author of the popular novel "A Tree with Deep Roots," which was also made into a drama. The Wind in the Stars is set in Fukuoka Prison in 1944, where Yun Dong Ju was imprisoned.

The novel is a "faction" (a word that combines the words "fact" and "fiction," and refers to a work that creates a new work by adding imagination to historical facts) about the murder of a guard who had been harassing Suin in Fukuoka Prison, and the discovery of a poem written by Yun Dong Ju in the pocket of the guard's uniform.

Interestingly, it was Japanese playwright and director Keita Shirai who adapted Lee's novel into a stage-ready script. He not only adapted 'The Investigation', but also turned it into a play and staged it several times in Japan in 2020, 2023, and 2024. To this day, the play is still touring Japan under the name "The Investigation".

A scene from the play 'The Investigation'.
ⓒ Kookmin University Innovation Promotion Center

'The Investigation' centers on the search for the killer of a jailer's murder, but it also speaks to the usefulness of literature in violent times. Yun Dong Ju's famous poems are projected and read onstage at various times to match the context of the play.

The play was staged for two performances in early June at the Traveler Theater, a small theater in Seongbuk-gu, Seoul. The actors are all Kookmin University students.

Seo Jae Gil, a professor of Korean literature at KMU, saw the play in Japan and fell in love with it, so he decided to translate it back into Korean and produce it in Korea for the first time. "I think it's a good translation of the original work, which is a mixture of historical fact and fiction, into stage art," Seo said of The Wind That Blows Through the Stars. "The simple desire to introduce the play in Korea led to the creation of a student theater performance project."

He created a class called 'Alpha Project' and entrusted students with the roles of casting, directing, planning, stage manager, and art director to bring the play to the Korean stage for the first time for two days. The students passed their final exams by staging the play.

In addition to Yun Dong Ju, the play's main character, Yuichi, a student who investigates the murder of a guard, is also played by a female actor. Kim Chae Bong, a master's student in Korean literature, said, "In the original novel, 'The Investigation' Yuichi is a cadet who was forced out of school at the age of high school students. A man who lived in a cultured world, such as a lover of novels, was thrown into a barbaric world (of prison), and I thought it would be good to have an actor who could delicately portray such a stark difference."

Kim Jin Woo, a student who directed the play "Yun Dong Ju" talked about the process of creating a gender-free play, saying, "In the process of deciding on the roles, the actors communicated with each other about whether they wanted to play the roles as men, or as beings who were neither female nor male, and decided to play the gender that resonated with them the most." He added, "We tried to create the play by talking about how Yoon Dong-joo has a powerful image in real life, but to an actor, he is 'just a person like you in the end. In fact, one audience member who saw the play commented, "It was so good that it made me think that Yoon Dong-joo was really a woman."

"I thought that theater itself could be an effective educational tool to help students understand the colonial situation and learn about the past," says Kim. In Korean society, the colonial past has become a distant story, and it is often mentioned as if it is something that should be forgotten." "The Investigation is fascinating because it shows two colonized young men, Yun Dong Ju and Yuichi, using literature to reflect on their lives in a violent world and whether they can move on. I hope it will be an opportunity to think about how we can connect the concerns of these young people with the concerns of today's youth."

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