Seoul searching: From South Korea, with love
Fans of K-Pop and K-Drama are in for a treat this Brisbane Festival with La Boite Theatre co-production Koreaboo, a heartfelt origin story.
If you look up the meaning of Koreaboo, it’s a derogatory term referring to a non-Korean person so obsessed with Korean culture that they might even renounce their own culture. The fact that such a term even exists illustrates just how popular many aspects of the country’s culture have become in recent years, from K-pop to K-drama to K-beauty treatments.
Koreaboo, the play, is on at La Boite Theatre’s Roundhouse in September as part of Brisbane Festival. Written by and starring Michelle Lim Davidson (from acclaimed ABC series, The Newsreader), the part-autobiographical story is about young Australian woman, Hannah, adopted from South Korea, who’s desperate to connect with her roots and meet her birth mother. The play alternates big laughs with poignancy and had a positively reviewed run by Griffin Theatre Company in Sydney last year. Directed by Jessica Arthur, it’s a co-production with La Boite and Brisbane Festival.
Playing opposite Lim Davidson as “Umma” (Korean for mother) is Heather Jeong. If the name is familiar, you might have seen her cooking up a storm of Korean food on shows such as SBS’s The Cook-Up With Adam Liaw, Food Safari Earth and Seven Network’s Sunrise.
With no acting background, Jeong came to the role via an unconventional route, as she explains.
“For over 15 years, I’ve been doing work with Korean Australian adoptees, so I had met Michelle about 12-13 years ago,” Jeong says. “We were having dinner one night and Michelle mentioned a play she was working on. She said it was a two-hander and she asked me if I’d be interested in having a role. And I said, ‘Of course!’, not knowing what a two-hander meant.”
Jeong laughs as she adds: “When she showed me the script, I said, ‘There’s only two people in the play’. I thought I’d be carrying a box on stage.”
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“With cooking, I was in the media quite a lot through festivals or radio or TV,” she says. “I had to communicate with a wide audience, so it’s not that different. Cooking in front of people, you have to be able to perform. One evolved to another very naturally and organically.
“What’s different is that if I’m performing for a festival or a cooking class, I have to talk nonstop. Any gap is quite uncomfortable. In the play, of course, it’s very different. So, in that aspect I had to really change.”
Jeong identifies the audience’s reactions as a major highlight for her, from hearing people cry at the sad parts to lots of laughter in the zany sections.
“I’ve been to a lot of plays myself and this audience is very mixed,” she says. “Very young people come to see it as well as the older audience, and both sexes, so that’s nice to see.”
The fact that the story is loosely based on Lim Davidson’s experience growing up in Australia without much connection to her culture, gives the story authenticity.
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“There’s truth and realness in Michelle’s writing and in her message because it is so close to heart and close to home,” Jeong explains. “The play has an amazing effect on the audience, not only for the Korean Australian adoptees but as a child or as a parent or anyone who’s going through a relationship – there’s comedy and sadness.”
The character of the mother who gave up her daughter might seem a little unsympathetic to some, especially as Umma is at first not very warm and welcoming to Hannah. Jeong had to go through an emotional process to identify with her.
“That was probably the hardest part of playing the role because I just couldn’t get inside her head,” she admits. “I have three children myself and I thought, just biologically, once you have your child, you just love them, so why wouldn’t you not connect with your daughter with open arms?
“It was very hard. But once you get into character and you realise Umma’s background and that she had to really survive … (you understand). She never even got to hold her child and there was no connection. You often have to be given time to nurture that relationship.”
The wide-scale practice of inter-country adoption of children post-Korean War has gained media exposure in recent years.
“I think the government was trying to do the right thing,” Jeong says. “But there were 200,000 Korean adoptees that went abroad and I think a lot of it was not done the right way and there have been court cases about it. It’s one of the scars or by-product of a poverty-stricken country with little access to international law or English language.”
Jeong came to Australia from South Korea when she was seven years old and now lives with her husband and three children in Sydney. She travels back to her country of origin regularly and observes that it’s definitely become incredibly popular with Western tourists in recent times.
Feeling confident that I’m not classifiable as a Koreaboo, I tell her I’ve already been twice and am planning a third trip, and that I love South Korean boy band BTS and K-dramas on streaming services. We bond over our love of the K-pop super group and she finishes by giving me a few tips for easy Korean meals – a BBQ marinade, Korean pancake and kim-chi fried rice. I can’t wait to try them!
Koreaboo plays La Boite’s Roundhouse Theatre, Kelvin Grove, September 2-19.
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