SYNOPSIS

In this changgeuk, Sim Cheong is recast not as a saintly filial daughter but as a figure of layered victimhood. The drama opens with Father Sim, blind and resentful, trying to throw away the infant he blames for his wife’s death. The baby is represented by a folded blanket, retrieved and covered by a young Sim Cheong. From the beginning, multiple Cheongs exist side by side — child, adolescent, and symbolic doubles — their identities fractured across the stage.

As she grows, the fifteen-year-old Cheong is sent to meet Madame Jang, who claims to be her mother’s friend and wishes to adopt her. In this version, Jang’s three sons subject Cheong to ridicule and violence while Jang looks away, repeating her offer of adoption and forbidding Cheong to leave. Father Sim meanwhile falls into the water and is rescued by a monk, who tells him he can regain his sight in three years if he offers 300 bags of rice to the temple. He vows to do so. Hearing this vow, Cheong returns home, refuses Jang’s adoption, and discovers her father’s promise.

When sailors seek a young maiden to sacrifice to the sea, Cheong volunteers herself. Father Sim, haunted by nightmares of his wife’s funeral, later realizes what has happened and sinks into grief.

Act Two shifts the focus to Father Sim, now married to Madame Peng. He briefly enjoys wealth before she absconds with his fortune. Reduced to poverty, he journeys to a banquet for the blind in the capital. Along the way, he encounters a group of women, all resembling Madame Peng. What begins as playful attention soon turns mocking and symbolic: the women engage him in 방아찧기 (a rice-pounding game used here as a metaphor for lust), before ridiculing him and finally stripping off his pants. The extended sequence seems intended to underline his immaturity and frivolity, even as his daughter suffers in silence.

When he arrives at the gathering, guards recognize him and bring him on stage. In a fog-shrouded vision, he hears Cheong’s voice. At that moment his sight is miraculously restored, but what he sees is unbearable: his daughter shackled and blindfolded, thrown into the sea as a sacrifice. She is dragged back before him, dying. The monk reappears and forces him to look upon her final moments. As Cheong expires, the stage screen shows her walking away from the set and descending the stairs of the actual National Theatre, as if her ghost leaves not only the story but the performance itself.


REVIEW

Changgeuk Sim Cheong is a modern adaptation of the pansori Sim Cheong-ga, reimagined by the National Changgeuk Company of Korea with both plot and thematic twists.

The orchestration combined traditional gugak instruments with Western strings such as violin, viola, cello, and bass. Gugak instruments included ajaeng (a bowed zither), haegeum (two-string fiddle), gayageum (zither), as well as daegeum (bamboo flute) and piri (double-reed pipe). The ajaeng often produced a reedy timbre that reminded me of wind instruments. Most impressive, however, was the five-drum ensemble. Though they played in unison much of the time, the lead drummer would change methods first, sometimes striking the rim instead of the skin, and the others followed. They used sticks, hands, and even unusual beaters resembling “iron brushes,” bundles of thin flat strips of metal or plastic about 20 cm long. These produced a sharper, metallic snap than wooden sticks, adding distinctive tonal variety. Since the drums marked the beginning of most scenes, their shifts acted as narrative cues, setting the tension and hinting at how the atmosphere would unfold. In Act II, a string intermezzo was included, and strings supported some earlier scenes in the second act as well. The string players remained unseen during the show but came forward for the curtain call.

The story itself should be familiar to most Koreans, but I found it surprisingly difficult to follow. Much of the libretto drew directly from the original pansori, dense with Sino-Korean vocabulary. Eventually I relied on the English supertitles, written in plain, clear prose, but the speed of delivery in some songs made it hard to both read and watch the stage action. The program book provided Korean and German versions of key poetic passages, such as:

Korean lyrics on the program book:

추월은 만정허여
산호주렴에 비쳐들 제

German lyrics on the program book:

Der Garten ist vom Herbstmond hell beleuchtet.
Das Mondlicht scheint durch den Vorhang aus Korallenperlen.

English translation:

The garden is brightly lit by the autumn moon.
The moonlight shines through the curtain of coral pearls.

Korean lyrics embedded hanja (Chinese characters):

秋月은 滿情허여
珊瑚珠簾에 비쳐들 제

As many around me laughed or sighed at certain lines, I realized how much prior knowledge of pansori would help in catching the nuance. The live feed from an on-stage cameraman provided a clear focus, though I still felt split between watching the stage and following the English supertitles.

In the traditional tale, Father Sim, blind and destitute after losing his wife in childbirth, begged neighbor women to breastfeed his baby. Sim Cheong survived through their mercy, and grew into a filial daughter, later begging herself to support him. When a wealthy noblewoman, Jang, offered to adopt her, she refused, choosing instead to stay with her father. One day, Father Sim fell into a stream and was saved by a monk, who told him that if he donated 300 bags of rice to the temple, his eyes would open. Desperate, he made this vow. To fulfill it, Sim Cheong sold herself to sailors preparing for a dangerous voyage, who sought a maiden sacrifice to calm the sea god. She leapt into the water, but was saved by the sea god and reunited with her mother in the underwater palace, before returning to the mortal world in a lotus blossom. She was discovered by the emperor, who married her. Still missing her father, Sim Cheong invited the blind to a banquet. There she was reunited with her father, who miraculously regained his sight at the moment of recognition.

Though traces of the story may reach back to Silla-era Buddhist legend, the version we know today took shape in the Joseon dynasty centuries ago, shaped by Confucian ideals and Buddhist motifs. It is within that Confucian framework that Sim Cheong is praised as a “filial daughter,” yet to me it is deeply unsettling: a blind father discards his teenage daughter into the sea for the chance to regain his sight, and society glorifies this as virtue.

In this changgeuk, however, the storyline was significantly altered with new themes and darker twists. The director’s note described Sim Cheong as reborn “beyond time and space,” a voice for today’s marginalized. Yet on stage, I saw less independence than repeated victimhood. She runs away, but is dragged back. At one point, Sim Cheong even raises her hands to choke her father — a flash of rebellion — but she cannot follow through. With the underlying theme so firmly rooted in filial sacrifice, the staging could not bend too far, and her gesture collapses into hesitation.

Noblewoman Jang, reimagined as complicit in abuse, only deepens her suffering. In the end, Sim Cheong is still a sacrifice for rice, not a transcendent figure. She speaks for the powerless, yes, but never gains power herself. One critic’s summary put it bluntly: “심봉사–심청의 관계 ‘가해자–피해자’로 해석” (the relationship between Father Sim and Sim Cheong is interpreted as perpetrator–victim).

The production multiplied her image into many bodies: a child, a dancer, an old woman, even a chorus of dozens of little girls. Perhaps they symbolized innocence, abstraction, timeless voice, and today’s children deserving better lives. But on stage it added complexity, sometimes making her story feel more diffuse than clear. One recurring image showed Sim Cheong lying flat on her back, stretched straight across the floor. This seemed to symbolize fate and suffering, a body displayed for others’ actions. For me, this repetition undercut the idea of rebirth and emphasized helplessness.

Even the opening scene layered identities. Father Sim tried to throw away the infant, represented by a folded blanket, blaming her for his wife’s death. At that moment, two Sim Cheongs coexisted: the infant (blanket) and the young girl who picked it up. She covered him with it, and he refolded it into a baby shape before leaving to beg for milk. This was my first realization of how the show would continually multiply and fragment her presence.

The staging fielded nearly 150 performers, including the NOI Opera chorus and the many little Sim Cheongs. The stage began with a small box opening into a larger frame, creating a finger-zoom effect reminiscent of Maybe Happy Ending on Broadway, though this zoom effect was not repeated later. Above the stage opening, live video from an on-stage cameraman was projected throughout the performance. In Act I, Madame Peng walked the stage in a tight dress without singing; in Act II she reappeared to sing with Father Sim, now in a Chanel suit and 12cm heels. Father Sim was played by Kim Junsu, the star of the Korean changgeuk scene, who showed impressive versatility in both singing and acting. Kim Woo-jeong portrayed Sim Cheong with a clean, youthful voice that captured the rhythm and vitality of a 15-year-old.

At the curtain call, roles and names were projected as each actor bowed. When Kim Su-in, known from Phantom Singer 4, appeared in his small role as a guard, the audience erupted in recognition. Even the monk who demanded 300 bags of rice was listed as “낯선남자” (A Stranger), which drew laughter from the audience — a punch line that reduced him from holy authority to just another opportunist.

Tickets ranged from 80,000 to 20,000 won, with many discount options. I paid only about twenty dollars, which felt remarkable for a production of this scale. With government funding and many actors on public payroll, the company can afford elaborate staging, a cast of around one hundred and fifty, and to provide full translations and program materials — all at an accessible price. They performed only four times, and tickets sold so quickly that I could only secure a seat on the second floor. The program book, sold at the theatre, even included the entire script in both Korean and German.

This was only my second changgeuk attendance, and I know I missed many nuances. Still, I see the National Changgeuk Company of Korea pushing boundaries, experimenting with scale, multimedia, and modern symbolism. Changgeuk is not stagnant; it is evolving and daring. Yet as a musical fan, I must admit this felt closer to Korean opera than to musical theatre. I still wonder whether the production simply loaded too much into one show, or if I am too new to perceive all the layers it offered.

It reminded me of my first encounter with Rigoletto during high school. I could not follow the story clearly then; I only felt it was tragic and sad. Over time I gained perspective and now hear much more in it. Perhaps Sim Cheong will return in a future production, and by then I may also return as a better reviewer, able to take in more of its layers.