[Opinion] National Theater in Myeong-dong

“I was five years old when I began to watch theatrical pieces. I was entirely fascinated by heroines on the stage like Kim Jin-jin and Cho Keum-ang. I wanted to be like them,” said Kim Hye-ja, a leading actress who carries a Korean mother figure.

Riding on her mother’s back, she used to go into then the National Theater (now privately owned by Daehan Finance) located in Myeong-dong, Jung-gu in Seoul. Grown-ups inside the theater often gave her suspicious looks as if they said ‘what are you doing here, kid?’ But the fact is that early-age cultural experiences last throughout life and even change the course of life. If we had not had the National Theater at that time, we could not have a brilliant actress like Kim today.

▷ Kids are not the only ones moved and affected by cultural experiences. Teens find a shelter. And even adults encounter with an oasis in the midst of their daily lives that sooths their exhausted souls.

Then, we have to keep the oasis, shelter or cultural space - whatever we call it - at the center of our lives. I don’t need to take Lincoln Center located at the heart of New York as an example to make people understand. Theater must be located at the center of a city so that people visit the place coming and going. But the Seoul Arts Center (Seocho-dong, Seoul) and the National Theater (Jangchung-dong, Seoul) all sit outside downtown Seoul, making a visit to those places troublesome.

▷ The old National Theater site, in contrast, is seated at the heart of the city, Myeong-dong. You can meet people of all different ages, from teens to people in their 40s and get latest fashion statements there. You can also walk on the streets lined with fancy restaurants, multiplex cinemas, large video game arcades and high-tech electronic shops. More recently in May, a music concert hall called Cost Hall was opened near Myeongdong Cathedral.

By restoring the National Theater, which had been a mecca of performing arts for 18 years since 1957, we will be able to turn the downtown area into a birthplace of cultural renaissance

▷ It was not only the end of Myeong-dong’s cultural heyday, but also a tragedy in the ideologically-divided nation that the National Theater was moved to a grand place in Jangchung-dong after the site was sold to Daehan Investment and Finance.

The Ministry of Culture and Tourism has unveiled a plan to buy back the old site to rebuild an arts theater. The rub is how the ministry will be able to mobilize 40 billion won in next year’s government budget.

This time, however, culture will prevail, not the economic logic. Tradition cannot be put into money value. Imagine people who used to go to Myung-dong just for fun enrich their lives with a theatrical piece that touches their hearts. Isn’t it something we all feel happy about?