Between Broadway and the Local: Arts Communication International (ACOM), Seol & Company, and the South Korean Musical Industry

Abstract

Two companies with strong international ties serve as anchors for the Korean musical theatre industry in the early twenty-first century: Arts Communication International (ACOM) and Seol & Company. Weathering Korea’s economic crisis, Seol & Company established an exclusive partnership with the Really Useful Company Asia-Pacific, a subsidiary of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s RUG, and produced the first Korean production of The Phantom of the Opera. ACOM also produces big budget musicals transnationally, but creates and exports inherently Korean works, such as The Last Empress (1995), a musical about the nineteenth-century Korean empress Myeongseong.