SELL ME: I Am From North Korea is inspired by the true stories of incredibly courageous North Korean women defectors, who risk everything to escape one of the world’s most repressive regimes. Created by playwright and performer Sora Baek, SELL ME makes its UK Premiere at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2024, following international success including an invited performance at the US Capitol Centre, hosted by the US House of Representatives.
SELL ME follows 15-year-old Jisun, a North Korean girl who decides to sell herself to an old Chinese man to make money for her mother’s medication. After risking her life by crossing the Tumen River into China, Jisun learns her malnourished, underdeveloped body is not wanted. She finds herself having to make her own way on the streets, struggling in a merciless foreign land where her very existence is illegal.
Inspired by the journeys of many North Korean women defectors, SELL ME portrays the everyday lives and impossible choices made by those living in North Korea, too often overlooked and distorted by Western media.
Sora Baek’s grandparents fled the North during the Korean war with her father when he was only four years old. She grew up in a small South Korean town across the river from North Korea, looking out at the empty ghost buildings. Sora’s writing and research into the lives of North Korean defectors were born out of her family’s inability to return home, the pain caused to many innocent families by the war that divided the two countries, and the pain many have since continued to live through. She presents this performance for her father, her grandfather, and all those who cannot go home.
SELL ME: I Am From North Korea will dispel Western misconceptions of North Korea, in this raw and authentic performance which centres women’s rights and the struggles of ordinary North Koreans.
