Anchor: The cumulative audience for the non-verbal percussion show, Nanta, recently exceeded ten million people. This latest feat comes 17 years after the performance first debuted and it is continuing to enthrall audiences in Korea and abroad.
Our Bae Joo-yon has more on the show’s success and its future plans.
 
Report: Nanta was born in 1997 when South Korea was deep in the Asian financial crisis. 
 
The non-verbal show depicts the preparation of traditional wedding dishes by three cooks and a manager, featuring improvised percussion instruments such as cutting boards and kitchen knives.
 
Integrating South Korea's traditional percussion music, Samulnori, with comedy, the show has played a leading role in spreading the Korean Wave, or Hallyu, by setting all kinds of new records.
 
The show sold out at the 1999 Edinburgh Festival Fringe in the UK where it made its international debut and received an award for best performance. Nanta also played on Broadway in New York, a first for an Asian show, in 2004 and ended its run in August 2005. In 2006, Nanta became the first South Korean show to attract more than one million foreign viewers.
 
Now the show has reached another milestone in attracting an audience of more than ten million since its debut 17 years ago. 
 
Its producer PMC Production disclosed earlier this month that Nanta's cumulative audience at home and abroad totaled 10-million-85-thousand-10 people as of December 31st of last year. So far, Nanta has been performed in 289 cities in 51 countries.
 
During a celebratory event on Monday, Nanta’s creator, Song Seung-hwan, announced that a Nanta theater is set to open in China in March.
 
[Sound bite: Song Seung-hwan – PMC Production CEO & Producer of Nanta (Korean)]
“Nanta is just 17-year-old now. The show is still a minor. I will nurture it well.”
 
Choi Kwang-il, the head of the Korea Performing Arts and Tourism Association, advised that Korean producers should not simply focus on ticket sales but make efforts to create another blockbuster.
 
[Sound bite: Choi Kwang-il-Head of the Korea Performing Arts and Tourism Association (Korean)]
“Though the number of viewers is growing, the growth is not proportionate to the increase in sales”
 
Attending the event, Culture Minister Kim Jong-deok and others encouraged Korean stage producers and actors to keep the Korean spirit in their future projects, noting that that was the key to Nanta’s international success.
Bae Joo-yon, KBS World Radio News.