※ This review was written as part of Here We Are Theatre Club, with tickets provided. All opinions and assessments expressed are entirely my own.
As a member of the Here We Are Theatre Club (HTC), I had the chance to see <Along with the Gods: The Afterlife> on a complimentary ticket!
I absolutely loved both the original webtoon and the films, so my excitement for this musical was through the roof.
Today I'm going to share my review of the show, which I attended with all that anticipation in tow!
Info
- Title: Original Gamugeuk 〈Along with the Gods: The Afterlife〉
- Venue: NOL Theatre Daehangno Woori Card Hall
- Date/Time: 2026. 07. 04 PM 7:00
- Cast: Ganglim [Baek Hyung-hoon] / Jingihan [Lee Gi-wan] / Kim Jahong [Yoon Tae-ho] / Haewonmaek [Oh Hyun-jung] / Deokchun [Seo Yeon-jung] and others
*What is a Gamugeuk?
First of all, this production isn't just a regular musical — it's classified as a changjakgamugeuk (original gamugeuk).
I wasn't familiar with the term at first, so I looked it up: it refers to a Korean-style original musical in which song, dance, and drama are woven together organically.
It turns out the show premiered in 2015 and has been revived for multiple seasons since!
It's one of the signature productions of the Seoul Arts Company, a national arts organization!
Perhaps because of that, there were so many scenes where the performers used their bodies in the most beautiful ways!!
Synopsis
Every soul in the world boards the train to the afterlife and departs from the land of the living.
Haewonmaek, Deokchun, and their leader Ganglim — the three afterlife emissaries — guide the souls listed in the Book of the Dead to the underworld.
When the train arrives at the gates of the afterlife, each soul is assigned a defense attorney and
embarks on a journey through seven courts of hell over the course of 49 days.
Racing toward Kim Jahong — an utterly ordinary man who lived a quiet life and died at thirty-nine — is Jingihan,
a public defender who has resolved to walk the most humane path possible in pursuit of a just afterlife.
Meanwhile, the three emissaries, who had been escorting souls to the underworld, give chase to a vengeful spirit that has fled the train.
Ganglim catches the wandering spirit and, upon hearing the unjust story behind its suffering, resolves to help it find peace.
He knows better than anyone the rule that afterlife emissaries must not interfere in the affairs of the living — yet he chooses to break it, determined to become a more humane warrior.
The Venue
It was my first time at NOL Theatre's Woori Card Hall…
The ticket booth and the Woori Card Hall are connected through a separate building, and the first and second levels of seating are arranged in reverse order from what you'd expect, so I got completely lost…
It looked like a different production was running in the theater attached to the ticket booth building!
The ticket booth, casting board, and photo zone were all in the main building, while the actual performance hall was in a separate one!
Since it was an evening show and the source material is so well-known from the films, it seemed like a lot of families and younger students had come out to see it!
@ Venue Tips!!
I imagine a lot of people will want to use the restroom before the show, but the bathrooms in the main building (near the ticket booth) get extremely long lines because of the other theater — it's quite chaotic!!
If you're seeing the show at Woori Card Hall, head over to the hall itself and use the restrooms on the first or second seating level!!
Even with just 20 minutes to curtain, I had the whole place to myself — totally stress-free!
I'd assumed it would be a small black-box theater since it's in Daehangno, but the house was actually quite spacious and comfortable — a pleasant surprise.
Both empty-stage and curtain-call photography were permitted, which was great haha.
The stage felt quite far from where I was sitting, but opera glasses made everything perfectly clear!
And honestly, Along with the Gods seemed like a show that actually reveals more of its magic when you're not looking through opera glasses.
Before the show, smoke began rising from the stage and I caught the scent of incense — I wondered what was going on, and it turned out they had set up incense burners to evoke the atmosphere of a funeral hall.
Given that the production deals with the afterlife, I thought it was a clever device to put the audience in the right headspace from the very start!
The stage was steeply raked, and I found myself worrying about the performers as I waited for the show to begin!
Review
From the very first moment, the staging was overwhelming in the best way, and the performers' vocal power was just incredible!
I'd honestly worried it might feel dull or too familiar since I already knew the story, but instead it brought me back to a childlike sense of wonder and made me reflect on myself all over again.
Watching the seven hells unfold, I kept asking myself: "What kind of life am I living right now?"
There were so many stories centered on family and human connection that I found myself both moved and deeply relating to what was on stage.
And there were so many moments where I thought, "Ah, this is exactly why it's called a gamugeuk" — moments of pure, breathtaking beauty.
The choreography, infused with Korean traditional dance, was genuinely jaw-dropping.
For reference, the seats to my right were occupied by audience members around my parents' age,
and to my left were children — and every time the staging dazzled, you could see them light up with surprise!
There really was that much to see and take in!
What also caught me off guard was the level of detail in the staging!
((In the past I used to focus mainly on the story, but now, as a university student with dreams of working in production and direction, I've been making a conscious effort to pay close attention to the staging itself haha.))
Maybe that's why I found the stage so endlessly fun and impressive!
Little touches like "All Dead," "Already Deceased," and the "Afterlife Photo Booth" kept playfully reminding you of the afterlife premise in ways that were easy to forget in the middle of the action.
I lost count of how many times I snickered to myself throughout the show lol.
Reading the program book afterward, I learned that the creative team had placed increasing emphasis on LED design with each new production, believing it to be ever more essential to the work!
It's moments like that which remind me why theater is rewarding both while you're watching it and long after it's over… haha.
The show runs just over three hours, which is quite long and honestly exhausting — but I was so absorbed that time seemed to fly by.
The fact that each of the seven hells is played with a comedic touch kept things from ever feeling tedious!
Some of the props had a slightly rough, analog quality to them — a bit of a "huh?" moment — but I think that's actually part of Along with the Gods' charm lol!!
Actor Lee Gi-wan's lovably dopey energy and actor Yoon Tae-ho's sharp wit had me absolutely dying with laughter
The two of them had such great back-and-forth chemistry, and there were so many adorably funny scenes between them! The kings of the seven hells who appeared throughout were charming too!
The Yeomra hell scene was the funniest and most endearing of all… In the films, the King of Hell is portrayed as fearsome and stern, but here he comes across more like an enthusiastic department head who just wants to have a good time lol.
Along with the Gods has quite a few scenes where the performers come down into the audience, or make their entrances through the wide center aisle in the middle of the house!
(For the record, Jingihan's first entrance is made right there — business cards flying — and so is the final scene!!)
What made it so hilarious was that the Yeomra hell is a place of punishment for those who have wounded others with words — tongues are pulled out and set adrift on a river so the condemned can no longer speak..!
But then he announced that these days, because of malicious online comments, fingers are also being cut off and thrown in — and he went along the front row asking audience members to hold out their palms for inspection,
and if they passed, he handed each of them a hallabong orange with the most self-satisfied expression on his face 🤣🤣🤣
I was so envious of the front-row audience members!!!! I still clearly remember someone shouting "Yeomra!!! The best!!!" — that moment really stuck with me!!
And then, out of nowhere, he just starts dancing. It was so funny —
one of the ensemble performers from the company noticed there were a lot of children in our section and actually came all the way to the back of the house to give winks and handshakes before heading back.
It was the first time I'd ever been in a show where a performer came that close to me, and I didn't quite know how to react — it was both startling and hilarious!!
Later, the shadow puppetry used to depict the cycle of reincarnation in the afterlife was genuinely beautiful and brought me to tears — there were so many quietly moving moments scattered throughout..!!
The show is funny, but at the end of each hell I found myself asking, "Have I truly been living a good life?" — and before I knew it, I was completely immersed, experiencing everything as if I were Jahong himself.
It was a day that made me realize I may be an adult in age, but I still have a long way to go before I'm truly grown.
Curtain Call & Post-Show Remarks
Photography was permitted during the curtain call for this gamugeuk!
The performers made their entrance accompanied by stunning media art..!! (It was full-on Power Rangers energy!!! Absolutely electric..)
As it happened, three of the lead performers were marking their final performance that evening,
which made the lighting all the more intense and beautiful, I'm told.
I also learned through the post-show remarks that the entire run had been only about three weeks — far shorter than I'd realized.
After the curtain call, each of the performers shared a few words and reflections!
Actor Yoon Tae-ho said he had played the role of Jahong back in 2023 as well, and that he'd thought he'd said his goodbyes to the character — so he was honored to get to do it again.
Actor Lee Gi-wan shared that Along with the Gods was the very first production he performed in after joining the company!
He auditioned for the role of Jingihan four times before finally being cast this year.
(And yet he was so impossibly good that I never would have guessed..)
Actor Baek Hyung-hoon, who played Ganglim, said that because the rehearsal period was longer than the actual run, he felt sad not to have been able to show the audience even more — that they deserved so much more than he'd had the chance to give.
((Actor Seo Yeon-jung arrived for the leads' final performance with Ganglim photocards dangling from her shoulders and tissues for tears hanging all around her — she was absolutely adorable..))
I was grateful to have caught the final performance of such a short three-week run,
and at the same time, it was genuinely heartbreaking to have only discovered the show near the very end..!
Thanks to the complimentary ticket, I got to learn about the gamugeuk form and experience a truly wonderful production!
Perhaps because the run was so short, the program book was digital-only and there didn't seem to be any merchandise — which was a real shame for me, since I collect a badge from every show I see haha.
I sincerely hope the next time around, it runs longer and gets to play on a grand stage.
Above all, I'm grateful that this production gave me the chance to reflect once more on what it means to be alive, and on what kind of person I am.
It was a precious experience that introduced me to the gamugeuk as a genre — one I'll carry with me for a long, long time!!
