"Taking Korean Theatre to the World"... Director Kim Jeongok Dies

Worked alongside veteran actors such as Park Geunhyeong and Kim Hyeja
Served as president of the International Theatre Institute under UNESCO and received numerous decorations

Theatre director Kim Jungok, who transformed theatre from something exotic into something Korean, passed away at 5:07 a.m. on the 17th. He was 94.

Theatre director Kim Jungok. Yonhap News Agency

According to Yonhap News Agency, he was born in Gwangju and graduated from Gwangju Seojung Middle School (six-year system). He then entered the Department of Korean Language and Literature at Chung-Ang University, later transferring to and graduating from the Department of French Language and Literature at Seoul National University. He went on to study French literature and film at the Sorbonne in France. There, under the influence of Yu Chi-jin (1905-1974), who had come to France, he changed his path to theatre. He was also with Yu in 1957 when Yu visited the headquarters of the International Theatre Institute (ITI) under UNESCO and expressed Korea’s intention to join.

After returning to Korea in 1959, he fully embarked on his theatre career as a full-time lecturer in the Department of Theatre and Film at Chung-Ang University. While at Chung-Ang University, he also coached the theatre club at Ewha Womans University. His script “The Trap of Love” was adapted into a film in 1960, and in the same year he joined Kim Jongwon and Lee Youngil in founding the Korean Film Critics Association.

In 1961, he began his career as a theatre director with the play “Lysistrata,” working with students from the Ewha Womans University theatre club. After serving as assistant director for “Hamlet” in 1962, he fully embarked on his path as a director with the founding of Minjung Theatre in 1963. The inaugural production was “Egg,” and the second work was the absurdist play “The Bald Soprano.” Park Geunhyeong and Kim Hyeja appeared in the productions. In 1977, Eugène Ionesco (1909-1994), the original author of “The Bald Soprano,” visited Korea, saw the play, and praised it.

In 1966, after founding Theatre Company Jayu (Freedom) with Lee Byungbok (1927-2017), he emerged as one of Korea’s leading directors through works such as “Feast of the Underdogs” (1966). Together with top actors of the time, including Park Jungja, he pursued a “third theatre” that overturned realism and a Western-centric perspective. He also spearheaded experiments to transform the stage of realist drama and devoted himself to developing a stage aesthetics that emphasized comic elements and theatricality. In addition, he made various attempts by incorporating traditional Korean performing arts and gut (shamanic ritual) forms into theatre, adding and re-creating Korean traditions. Thanks to this, he was credited with turning theatre “from Western to Eastern” and “from exotic to Korean.”

From the 1980s, leading Theatre Company Jayu, he presented works that reinterpreted traditional Korean sensibilities in a contemporary way in more than 10 countries and dozens of cities, including France, Spain, Japan, and Tunisia. As a pioneer of “K Performing Arts,” he received international acclaim early on.

He also experimented with collective creation involving actors and staff such as stage designers, with total theatre, and with montage techniques that did not adhere rigidly to plot.

In June 1995, he became the first Asian to be elected president of the ITI, was re-elected for three consecutive terms, and was later named honorary president. He also served as president of the Korea Culture and Arts Foundation (2000) and president of the National Academy of Arts, Republic of Korea (2011).

He was a “legend” of the Korean theatre world, having directed more than 200 plays on domestic and international stages over more than 60 years. In 2002, he became the first Korean to receive the Commandeur, the highest grade of France’s Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Chung Myungwhun and Sumi Jo later received the same decoration. He also received the Nikkei Asia Prize (culture category) in Japan, the Geumgwan Order of Cultural Merit of Korea, the National Academy of Arts Award, and the Ilmin Culture and Arts Award, among others.

Son Jinchaek, president of the National Academy of Arts, Republic of Korea, told Yonhap News Agency, “He was the one who laid the foundations of modern theatre and globalized Korean theatre,” adding, “He was a rational man with a keen and lucid judgment.”

He is survived by his wife Jo Kyungja; one son and one daughter, Kim Seungmi, a professor at Seoul Institute of the Arts, and Kim Seunggyun, a director of the Face Museum; and his son-in-law Hong Seungil, former CEO of JoongAng Ilbo Design. The wake is being held in Room 14 of the funeral hall at Seoul St. Mary’s Hospital (visits are allowed after 6 p.m. on the 17th). The funeral will be held at 7:30 a.m. on the 20th.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.