[News Culture] When The Phantom of the Opera opened in Korea in 2001, a large-scale international musical carrying a production budget of 12 billion won was anything but a safe proposition.
The Korean musical theater market was still relatively small, and committing that level of capital to a seven-month licensed production represented a considerable commercial risk. What followed helped alter expectations of how large the market could become.
The production played 244 performances, drew roughly 240,000 theatergoers and posted an average paid-seat occupancy rate of 94 percent. Its scale was equally unfamiliar to Korean audiences at the time: a chandelier weighing nearly a metric ton plunged toward the auditorium, the Paris Opera House seemed to collapse before their eyes, and an underground lake materialized onstage.
Before large-scale musical spectacle became commonplace in Korea, The Phantom of the Opera offered audiences something closer to a theatrical landmark than another imported title.
Its significance extended beyond ticket sales. The production demonstrated that musical theater in Korea could support long runs, substantial capital investment and large audiences. Corporate investment in musicals expanded in the years that followed, while purpose-built musical theaters became a more visible part of the performing arts landscape.
In that sense, The Phantom of the Opera occupies an unusual place in Korean theater history: it was not simply a hit, but one of the productions that helped establish commercial musical theater as a cultural industry.
Twenty-five years later, the show is returning at another milestone.
Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical celebrates its 40th anniversary worldwide in 2026, alongside the 25th anniversary of its Korean premiere. The new Korean-language production brings back performers from the successful 2023 season while introducing several new principal cast members.
Since its 1986 premiere, The Phantom of the Opera has been staged in 217 cities across 52 countries and translated into 23 languages, reaching more than 160 million theatergoers. It has also received more than 70 honors from major international awards programs, including the Tony and Olivier Awards.
Jae-rim Choi, Dong-seok Jeon and Kang-hyun Park will alternate as the Phantom, the elusive musical genius who lives beneath the Paris Opera House.
Choi and Jeon both return after appearing in the 2023 Korean production. Choi again takes on a role that draws on his vocal power and imposing stage presence, while Jeon revisits a character he previously approached through the contrast between the Phantom's rage and emotional vulnerability.
Park joins the production as a new Phantom. Known for combining a resonant voice with detailed dramatic acting, he will offer a new interpretation of a character whose menace, fragility and obsessive love have defined the musical for four decades.
Hae-won Lee and Sun-ho Choi will make their musical debuts as Christine Daaé.
Lee has built her career across opera, recital and crossover stages, while Choi studied vocal performance at Seoul National University before completing a master's program at the University of Music and Dance Cologne in Germany. Their casting places two performers with classical vocal backgrounds at the center of one of musical theater's most demanding soprano roles.
Won-geun Song and Sung-sik Kim will share the role of Raoul, Vicomte de Chagny. Song returns after appearing in the 2023 production, while Kim joins the anniversary season after establishing himself in a series of large-scale musicals since his major-theater debut in 2023.
Choi described the musical as a production whose visual world remains with an audience long after the curtain falls.
“The world of the show suddenly appeared right in front of me,” he said. “That moment remains in my mind almost like a photograph.”
Jeon said returning to the role has brought him back to his own beginnings in musical theater.
“This was the work that first made me understand what musical theater could be,” he said. “It takes me back to where I started. Audiences have waited for it, and so have I, and I want to approach it with even greater detail this time.”
For Park, joining the company during its 40th-anniversary year adds another dimension to his first appearance behind the mask.
“I’m excited to become part of a work that has been loved for so long,” he said. “Being able to join it at the particular milestone of its 40th anniversary makes it even more meaningful.”
Lee likewise described joining the production as an opportunity to enter a work whose stature has continued to grow across generations, while Choi said Christine had been a role she had admired since first encountering the musical.
Based on Gaston Leroux's novel, The Phantom of the Opera follows the relationship among the Phantom, a disfigured musical genius living beneath the Paris Opera House; Christine, the young singer whose talent develops under his influence; and Raoul, her childhood friend and romantic counterpart.
Its score includes “The Music of the Night,” “All I Ask of You” and “The Phantom of the Opera,” while its visual vocabulary — the masked ball, the subterranean lake and the enormous falling chandelier — has become inseparable from the musical's identity.
For Korean audiences, however, this anniversary season carries another layer of history. The production arriving in Seoul is not only celebrating 40 years of The Phantom of the Opera. It is returning 25 years after a Korean premiere that tested the limits of the country's musical theater business — and helped expand them.
The 40th-anniversary Korean-language production of The Phantom of the Opera will run exclusively in Seoul from Dec. 22 through Feb. 28, 2027, at Blue Square Woori Bank Hall.
Reported by News Culture M.J._mj94070777@nc.press
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