I went to see Dear Evan Hansen in South Korea.

In the summer of 2024, I spent an incredible two months, or eight weeks, living in Busan, South Korea. I was fully funded by the US State Department to learn Korean at Pusan National University, and when I was arrived in Korea, I was fully ready to take on what the country had to offer.

When we first went to the train station near our hotel in Oncheonjang, I noticed something specific: there were advertisements for Dear Evan Hansen on the lightpoles. I had known for a while that South Korea was a budding market for musicals, especially ones that had been on Broadway, but this was my first time seeing it.

It was when I took a closer look that I realized Kim Sunggyu, the leader of the K-pop group INFINITE, was on the advertisements. When I was a young Korean pop fan, back when I used to listen to it, I was such a diehard Kim Sunggyu stan.

And that, my friends, is how I ended up seeing Dear Evan Hansen at the Dream Theatre in Busan. I bought the ticket on a site for international people, and it ended up costing about $50 USD for a ticket in the front row of the balcony. I was impressed by my view, as the same ticket typically is twice as much on Broadway.

Here’s my review of the show!

They go all out with the aesthetics and design.

This was very much like an event. There was a fan cafe truck selling coffee when we first entered, and a lot of photo opportunities. I purchased their equivalent of a playbill for $8 USD, and it had a professional photoshoot of all of the actors and explained the story within it. There was also a nice lounge where people with chilling with alcohol.

I’m not familiar with local Korean theater law, but I did get yelled at when I was trying to photography my newly purchased book with the stage in the background.

Apparently you cannot take pictures of the stage, which used to be a thing in NYC theater, but now it’s a major marketing tactic no one enforces. They only care when you record because that breaks union rules for Actors’ Equity.

Now, that’s just before the show, but the set design was something I was impressed by as well. I saw the original DEH on Broadway, and knew people who worked with the show when it opened on Broadway too. For the Korean interpretation, they went all out with the lighting and set design.

The bed is the main consistent thing from the original show, but then they clearly blew their budget on casting and the set design when I saw the homes. Lots of moving pieces that looked really nice from the front side, even if the backs were definitely just blank.

Some things really did not translate well from English into Korean, or landed differently.

Having a solid grasp of Korean really helped with this show, as I understood about 70% of the show without needing to feel confused. I also was familiar with the show, having seen it already and memorized all of the songs in English.

Because I had this familiarity with the show, I was really curious to see how things were interpreted with the local audience. The humor is one bit that stood out to me: what Americans think is funny about the show the Korean audience would be dead silent for. Other bits that we wouldn’t find funny the Korean audience would laugh at.

Other translations I found a little problematic from an American perspective, but I don’t blame it because it makes more sense for the Korean audience. For example, Connor wears a lot of black and in the show he gets called out for it. For the Korean translation, they specifically tell him he dresses like a gangster, which had me taken aback.

It was also interesting seeing this show in Korea, which has a crisis with teen mental health (and mental health in general). I noticed a lot of the audience around me ended up in tears by the end, which I could see this probably hit home for a lot of people.

The cast did an excellent job! Although Sunggyu was the weak link.

As a whole, I was impressed with the casting for the show. Having never seen Korean musical theater, I had no idea what to expect when it came to quality, especially considering musical theater wasn’t really a thing there until recently in the more Western style of what we expect from “musical theater.”

However, I did find Sunggyu the weak link. He does a great job of singing the song, but I’m used to the Broadway interpretation of Evan Hansen. Sunggyu is very twitchy and stilted with his delivery, and sometimes he really failed to deliver the emotional gravity of watching your fake world unfold all around you.

I’m thinking specifically of “Words Fail,” as the Broadway interpretation often has Evan full on sobbing as he’s belting out. I saw Zachary Noah Piser (the first Asian Evan Hansen!) in the role, and he took the emotion to the next level. And it’s a bit unfair to compare a K-pop singer and idol to a trained musical theater artist, but I think my point is I expected a bit more because of that.

At the end of the show I saw all of the younger girls running down the steps, and I knew that could only mean one thing: Sunggyu was going to come out a the end of the show. I kind of had a feeling this wasn’t going to be like the Broadway stage dooring, especially since there are no playbills handed out.

I took my place in the little crowd, and watched as the girls screamed while Sunggyu came out. It’s a bit surreal ten years after I was obsessed with the guy and his group that I saw this happen, but I’m glad I did it. After that, I took a cute 20 minute walk along the river, taking in the gorgeous lights, to catch the next subway back to Pusan National University.

All in all, I really do not regret going to see this show. It was a wonderful experience to see a Korean production, especially after having worked in NYC’s theater scene for four years now. I’d do it again!

Follow me below on Instagram and Goodreads for more.