This Student Made A Korean 'Disney Princess' Musical For TikTok & It's Super Catchy
"There was no Korean Disney princess so I decided to make my own."
Julia Riew.
Whenever Disney is ready to do a musical about a Korean princess, we know the first person they should call.
Harvard student Julia Riew is winning herself a ton of fans on TikTok and around the world, with a Disney-inspired Korean musical that she's been dropping bit-by-bit on social media for the last few months.
The musical, called Shimcheong: A Folktale, casts Riew as an animated Korean princess who sings Disney-like original songs for her TikTok audience.
"There was no Korean Disney princess so I decided to make my own," she writes in the caption on her most popular video, which has been watched more than 1 million times on the app.
@juliariew There was no Korean Disney princess so I decided to make my own :) #disney #korean #koreanamerican #disneyprincess #musical #originalsong #originalmusical #musicaltheatre #theater #music #newsong #dreamworks
And she did a hell of a job.
People in the comments section couldn’t get enough of what Riew created, including many well-known TikTok creators.
One person commented: “This feels like a legit Disney song."
Others demanded the film to be made “immediately.”
A popular Instagram account, @tikatheiggy, also jumped in on the hype, commenting: “I’m so invested I need a full movie now!!!”
In the video, Riew wrote: “I’m a Korean American composer-lyricist-writer, and my dream is to write for Disney!”
The plot of the musical she wrote is based on her experience of “searching for belonging as a Korean-American.”
Eventually, she decided to use her story as her senior thesis at Harvard and posted an update on the musical to her TikTok account, where she hasaccumulated quite a big following.
@juliariew What a weekend! Three sold-out premiere peformances of Shimcheong: A Folktale for friends, family, and colleagues!! 💕 BEYOND thankful for this amazing cast and crew. Thank you everyone for your support and for joining us!!! 🇰🇷🇺🇸🥰 #korean #newmusical
“What a weekend! Three sold-out premiere performances of Shimcheong: A Folktale for friends, family, and colleagues!! BEYOND thankful for this amazing cast and crew. Thank you, everyone, for your support and for joining us!!!”
The comments were flooded with people encouraging and praising Reiw for her work, and a bunch even tagged Disney to get their attention.
“As a Korean American that grew up on Disney classics, I would love to see this movie,” wrote one user.
Meanwhile, others demanded to buy tickets for the movie.
Riew says she's hired an agent and she hopes to turn her story into something bigger, although she hasn't heard from Disney yet.
But even without Disney, she says producers and others have chipped in to support her with helfpul feedback and advice.
"It seems at this point the project will be moving forward," she told the Associated Press. She added that it could be an indie film, a stage production or "something else," although time will tell what it eventually looks like.
"It's been eye-opening to realize how many people would love to see this come to fruition."