[10][11][12][13][14] Choe Byong-hung is a Korean patriot who pretends to serve the Japanese during the occupation.
He suffers the anger of the people of his village, who find his deception too convincing.
His daughter commits suicide due to the shame of being "daughter of the puppet village head", after which Choe lures the Japanese forces into a trap in which he too perishes.
Tell O' The Forest was criticized by Kim Jong-il in On the Art of Opera for having the hero die before witnessing the moment of victory, as well as sticking to the "outmoded pattern" of using exclusively song, not a mixture of song and speech.
[15] The 2019 Laibach song "Honourable, Dead or Alive, When Following the Revolutionary Road" is a re-interpretation of an aria from Tell O' The Forest!