▲ Prof. Yun with the poster board of his musical ‘The Last Empress.’

No matter how much you are interested in musicals, you might have heard a musical called ‘The Last Empress,’ which was the first oversized domestic production and which exported to Broadway in 1997. It attracted more than million audiences and is still one of the mostly loved productions. Also, musical ‘Hero,’ which won six awards at the forth Musical Awards in 2010, is about Ahn Choong-Geun which is praised by many different entities. DKH met the director of two productions, Professor Ho-Jin Yun.

Prof. Yun (College of Arts and Crafts, Theater and Film) is a musical director who manages every single aspects including acting, singing, stage setting, and costumes and has a good press of completing the productions well. Practically, visualizing the text on the stage is director’s important role. “I was a Hollywoodkid since I was young. I always watched three to four movies a week, wishing to be a movie director and when I encountered acting in the play in my high school days, it had much stronger power to draw me than movies so I decided to be a musical director since then.” he said Also, he answered for the reason of producing historical musicals that “I wanted to produce something from our own history which is impressive and instructive. So, finally I chose the life of Empress Myeongseong because her life is tragic and the circumstances are still similar to the Korea of today.”

He added the driving force which helped him not to give up was the ‘Belief in himself’ during the five years of producing musical ‘The Last Empress.’ “One thing I always tell my students is 'Acting is believing.' If the belief that you can achieve your goal does not exist within you, their dream will always be short-lived. As everyone agrees, when someone can live on with doing what they want, they would be the best lucky people. However, Don’t ever try what you want to do adequately. Be crazy for it about your favorite things! When someone is crazy for what they want, enormous energy comes out and sickness, loneliness and tiresome would all gone, giving you more chance to come out with surprising results.” Reporter could feel his strong belief from his saying about living with our best since our life only come once. It seems as the idea of the director who ran for the improvement of domestic musicals for decades. Also, he is concerned that young generations, who did not go through such adversities as his generation did, are lack of effort and persistence, he charged dankookians to live active. “Just like a man looks better when he is into his work, the charm comes out when someone is focusing on their goals. Believe your potential and do your best, then you will have the awesome school life overcoming the very limited campus. I wish you experience everything you can do.” He added, “Since you took someone else’s opportunity to be in here when you got the admission on DKU, it is shameful not only to you, but the one whom you take the opportunity away if you don not give enough effort. You are already responsible to do your best since you are here in DKU.”

As a result of his effort to achieve his goal, musical ‘Hero’ successfully made inroads to Broadway in consequence of musical ‘The Last Empress.’ It is just one side of his achievement, but you should, like Prof. Yun did, start your journey to find your own way that you can overcome every adversity for your own life, come what may!