"Boku ni Honou no Sensha wo" starts its run in South Korea

The Japan-South Korea joint stage play production "Boku ni Honou no Sensha wo" starring SMAP's Kusanagi Tsuyoshi and Korean actor Cha Seung Won began its run in South Korea from 30 January at National Theatre of Korea and held a press conference on the same day. The press conference was attended by Kusanagi, Cha, Hirosue Ryoko and Kagawa Teruyuki. The play which has half of its lines in Korean, will be performed at the theatre which sits 1,300 people over 6 sessions until 3 Feb.

Kusanagi who is known as a South Korean expert in the entertainment world, regarded this play as something very special to him and expressed his happiness about performing in South Korea. He started learning the Korean language back in 2001 through the FujiTV programme "Chonan Kan" (Kusanagi's name read in Korean) and even released a CD and held signature events. When Kusanagi reached South Korea on 27 January, he was welcomed by his fans at the airport and even had large amounts of snacks sent by his fans for everyone in the cast and crew. Although it had been 5 years since Kusanagi last visited South Korea, he was surprised by the attention especially when more than 100 members of the press came for the pre-performance press conference on 30 January.

The play features Kusanagi as a Japanese teacher in North Korea during the 1920s who develops a strong friendship with a North Korean traditional arts leader played by Cha. Although Kusanagi is fluent in the Korean language, he is still nervous about saying half of his lines in Korean. During the play, both Japanese and Korean subtitles will be flashed on screen. In support for Kusanagi, fellow SMAP member Katori Shingo also came for the Korean performance on 30 January. As it was Katori's 36th birthday on 31 January, Kusanagi brought Katori out for a birthday celebration after his performance which the latter commented that it was the very first time they had spent his birthday together without anyone else present.

During the press conference, Cha also said that although Japan and South Korea are still having territorial disputes, he thought that it was the best time now for people from both countries to interact and understand each other in order to improve ties in future. As for Kagawa, he suffered a fracture to his ribs during a performance of the play in Japan and jokingly remarked that South Koreans have a lot of strength because he recovered from the first fracture and yet suffered the same injury when one of the Korean actors hugged him during the performance with too much force.

Source: Sanspo