Parachute

Starve anyone for three days, and they’ll climb over a neighbour’s wall.

Unemployment, homelessness, self-harm for insurance money, bankruptcies, forced early retirement… words that became all too familiar in Korea after the IMF bailout. The turmoil of the economic crisis drove defenceless ordinary people to the edge of a cliff. What they needed was a parachute — the restoration of a sense of community.

Burglars break into an empty apartment — not one or two, but three couples: careless teenagers Il-du and I-jeong, who want the place for their 100-day anniversary party; hapless thirty-something thieves Sam-sik and Sa-yeon, homeless yet with twins; and Oh-cheol and Yuk-rye, in their sixties, reunited after prison, he with terminal liver cancer. Then come a safe-company employee, an insurance agent and a bank clerk, Seo Cho-gu, Seo Jung-gu and Seo Mal-gu, who tell them all about the owner — until it turns out the three are con men who have been swindling the very burglars who break in.

Through a cheerful caper, the play shows broken families and the damage of selfish individualism, insisting that community matters most in hard times — gently suggesting to exhausted ordinary people that they embrace each other’s wounds and find warmth and hope together.