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Video: Witness the First Minute of EdFringe Hit Sell Me: I Am From North Korea
Sora Baek’s vivid depiction of a North Korean defector and her terrified escape from the deadly regime is breathtaking.
The Edinburgh Festival Fringe is the biggest arts festival in the world, with over 3,700 shows. This year, Playbill is on board our FringeShip for the festival and we’re taking you with us. Follow along as we cover every single aspect of the Fringe, aka our real-life Brigadoon!
What does it take to escape the impossible? In Sora Baek’s heartwrenching solo play Sell Me: I Am From North Korea, a 15-year-old girl is forced to embark on the adventure of a lifetime as she defects from North Korea by willingly selling herself to the highest bidder.
Blending historical photographs and real-life footage in with the veiled story (rendered in such a way so as to protect the identities of those who have given testimony), the first minute of the show can be viewed above.
Heavily based on testimony from women who escaped the authoritarian regime, the show is a vivid depiction of a young girl’s terrified escape, and the lengths to which she is forced to go to stay alive. After deciding to sell herself outright to buy medication for her dying mother, she learns that her malnourished body is not sexually desirable enough for the men her trafficker can find. Abandoned in a foreign country with little knowledge of how to operate outside of North Korean society, she struggles to reframe her own identity in a place where her very existence is illegal.
Sell Me: I Am From North Korea is making its U.K. Premiere at the Edinburgh Fringe, following an invited performance at the U.S. Capitol Centre, hosted by the U.S. House of Representatives.
Starring Baek as the 15-year-old Jisun, Sell Me: I Am From North Korea is the culmination of Baek’s extensive work as a playwright. Now New York-based, Baek is a second generation North Korean refugee. Baek’s grandparents fled the North during the Korean war with her father when he was only four years old. She grew up in a small South Korean town across the river from North Korea, looking out at the empty ghost buildings.
Baek’s writing and research into the lives of North Korean defectors was born out of her family’s inability to return home, the pain caused to many innocent families by the war that divided the two countries, and the pain many have since continued to live through. She presents this performance for her father, her grandfather, and all those who cannot go home.
Sell Me: I Am From North Korea runs through August 25 at Pleasance Courtyard. Click here for tickets.
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