Photo: Scene from Maybe Happy Ending. Credit: CJ ENM.
In the latest triumph for South Korea’s pop culture, the English-language adaptation of the musical Maybe Happy Ending 어쩌면 해피엔딩 won six Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical and Best Direction of a Musical. Park Cheon-hue 박천휴 became the first South Korean to win a Tony, then did it again with wins in both Best Book of a Musical and Best Original Score, together with Will Aronson.
Set in a near-future Seoul, Maybe Happy Ending depicts humanoid helper robots finding love after being abandoned by their owners. Although the musical first opened in the Daehakro 대학로 theater district in Seoul in 2016, Park and Aronson aimed for international distribution when they began creating the musical together in 2014. Before opening in New York in November 2024, the musical also had a successful run in Tokyo, Japan.
Maybe Happy Ending’s win makes South Korea, as a country, an EGOT - a winner of Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony Awards. Squid Game 오징어게임 won six Emmy Awards in 2022, including Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series. Soprano Jo Su-mi 조수미 won a Grammy Award for Opera Recording in 1993. (Shockingly, BTS 방탄소년단, though nominated, has yet to win a Grammy.) Parasite 기생충 won four Academy Awards in 2020, and Yun Yeo-jeong 윤여정 won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in 2021.