Hidden Histories Revealed

“Sell Me” is a monument to those who defected from North Korea

What most people don’t know about North Korea could fill books -- Sora Baek’s solo

show serves as a compelling starting point to address the gap.

“Sell Me: I am from North Korea” has been selling out seats since its 2024 Edinburgh

Fringe Festival run. The sold-out Midwest premiere was presented by the Physical

Theater Festival Chicago June 4 and 6 at Theater Wit.

While the premise of “Sell Me” is dark, the overall experience of the play is just the

opposite. Laughter, wonder and delight counterbalance the precariousness of the

central character’s plight. I left feeling I’d just witnessed something monumental that had

long been hidden from view. If edification and awe were the experience Baek hopes

audiences have, then mission accomplished.

Baek has said most people know very little about North and South Korea. The challenge

of knowing the truth about North Korea is difficult even for North Koreans themselves.

As the play makes clear, citizens are taught from a very young age to obey and not to

question the wisdom of “Dear Leader.” The consequences are terrifying.

“Sell Me” follows the story of Jisun, a young girl from a rural village in North Korea,

separated from South Korea by a river. After her father is arrested and sent to a prison

camp, she decides to sell herself to a Chinese man via a human trafficker so she can

buy the medicine her mother needs. The girl is so thin and undernourished, she’s

rejected by the buyer, and abandoned in Seoul. Too afraid to return home, where she’d

surely be killed for defecting, she seeks a way to survive on her own as an

undocumented teenager.

In an interview with Edinburgh Fringe Festival’s “Persistent and Nasty” podcast, Baek

explained her obsession with North Korean defectors started after she read the memoir

of “The Girl with Seven Names” by Hyeonseo Lee. She was shocked to find she knew

so little about the North Korean experience, given her father defected as a child with his

parents. Baek herself was born and raised in Seoul, but immigrated to the U.S. as an

adult, to pursue a career in theater.

As a new mother, caring for her newborn son at home, she had time to read and watch

everything could find about North Korea. She also wrote daily in a journal. After a year

of writing, she realized she had material enough for a solo show. The story, she felt, was

an urgent one to tell because of how hidden the truth about life in North Korea is.

Baek is a gifted bilingual performer – which is amazing considering she didn’t begin to

learn English until she moved to the U.S. as an adult. Much of the show is in English,

but there are long passages in Korean, which immerse viewers into the world of the play

and the customs of those who populate it. Baek also employs video projections to show

Jisun’s home village, and the people and places of North Korea.

Baek plays a multitude of characters throughout, physically embodying them with

striking changes to her voice, facial expression and posture. The very few props she

uses are chosen for maximum impact, such as the comically curly wig she wears to

lampoon a maniacally happy hymn singer at a Red Cross shelter.

What I admired most about Baek’s show was how elegantly pared down it was – it

reminded me of an exquisitely carved miniature figurine. Direct address to the audience,

character dialogue, facial expressions, pauses, movement and projection were in

beautiful balance. It’s a marvel she managed to sift through so much research and edit

it into a cohesive, sure handed plot focused on Jisun, a composite of many defectors’

stories, and her journey out of a repressive country, and persistence in navigating the

challenges of poverty and fear of strangers who live outside the only rules she knows.

My own curiosity and sense of dread about the government of North Korean began with

the 2017 news story of Otto Warbier, a 21-year-old American student who was arrested

during a group tour of North Korea. The authorities there charged him with subversion,

and he was imprisoned for a year and a half. He was returned to the U.S. in a coma and

died soon after from brain injuries. The communist government’s brutality toward

political opposition is effectively touched on in “Sell Me” when Jisun visits her father in

prison. She bribes a prison guard with cigarettes so she can see him and bring him

food. The horror of their brief encounter in his prison cell is powerfully affecting – even

more so because of Baek’s pared down writing style.

With only two sold-out performances in Chicago, “Sell Me” surely could have sold out

10x that many performances, but I suspect the decision was due to the festival’s budget

limitations. Given the first-rate talent and enlightening subjects, the organizers have

curated year after year, one hopes they find growing support from Chicago’s generous

theater enthusiasts.

The 13th annual Physical Theater Festival Chicago continues through June 7 at Theater

Wit and The Dance Center of Columbia College. For more information visit

physicalfestival.com.

Photo Credit: “Sell Me: I am from North Korea” by Sora Baek (South Korea/USA) is part of the

Physical Theater Festival Chicago, June 1 - 7, 2026. Photo by Charles Yook

For  reviews go to https://www.theatreinchicago.com/