Park Ji-won Takes the Stage as Ali in the Musical Hell's Kitchen

What happened

fromis_9’s Park Ji-won took the stage as Ali in the musical Hell’s Kitchen at the GS Art Center in Gangnam-gu, Seoul, on 28 July 2026. TenAsia reported that it was her first musical stage since her debut.

The casting was announced three months earlier. Star News reported on 28 April 2026 that she had been cast as Ali, and The Musical wrote the same day that Son Seung-yeon, Kim Su-ha and Park Ji-won share the role. S&Co produces the Korean premiere.

The run is still going. The performance listing on Yes24 Ticket gives Hell’s Kitchen at the GS Art Center from 24 July to 8 November 2026, with a running time of 160 minutes including a 20-minute intermission.

Why is it trending?

How Park prepared for Ali is something she described herself. Cosmopolitan Korea reported on 23 July 2026 that she said, “Because it was my first musical, at first it was a little difficult to identify fully with Ali, the lead.” In the same interview she said that, following senior performers’ advice, she wrote a diary in the character’s voice and found what she and Ali have in common, and she named ‘No One’ — the number late in the show where Ali makes peace with her mother, Jersey — as the one she is most attached to.

On the day of her first performance she issued a comment through her agency, ASND. According to TenAsia she said, “I am nervous about standing on a musical stage for the first time since my debut, but the excitement is greater,” adding, “I prepared hard to convey Ali’s story to the audience with sincerity.”

An album had arrived a week before she went on. The tracklist Sports Kyunghyang published on 8 July 2026 gives ‘Why do I cry?’, the eighth song on the second full-length album Glow ME, as a unit song by Park Ji-won and Song Ha-young; and in Star News’s question-and-answer piece of 20 July she named ‘Teacher’, which she co-wrote and co-composed, as the song she is fondest of, saying, “It is also the first time I have taken on Afrobeat, and it is a style I had wanted to try, so it means all the more to me.”

What you need to know

• Park Ji-won is a member of the five-piece girl group fromis_9 under ASND, and the group debuted on 24 January 2018.
• The musical Hell’s Kitchen runs from 24 July to 8 November 2026 at the GS Art Center in Gangnam-gu, Seoul.
• Son Seung-yeon, Kim Su-ha and Park Ji-won share the role of Ali, and Park’s first performance was on 28 July 2026.
• The production is drawn from Alicia Keys’s music and life; after its 2024 Broadway premiere it was nominated in 13 Tony Award categories and won the 2025 Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album.
• The same summer, Park sang ‘Why do I cry?’ on Glow ME with Song Ha-young and co-wrote and co-composed ‘Teacher’.
• On 3 August 2026 she released ‘Dreaming Hazy’, the sixth song on the soundtrack of the ENA drama To You, My Dream (그대에게 드림).
• The music video is on the fromis_9 channel on YouTube. K-Culture Radar links to the official upload rather than re-hosting it.