EBS Documentary Follows 91-Year-Old Actor Shin Goo's 65 Years on Stage

When Shin Goo's wife was laid to rest during a regional tour of Waiting for Godot in 2025, the 91-year-old actor took the stage that same evening. The moment surfaces in the first episode of Era Witnesses (시대목격), a new EBS documentary series premiering on July 2 at 9:10 p.m., which traces Shin Goo's 65-year career in Korean theater and situates him inside the broader arc of the country's performing arts.

In an interview with the production team, Shin Goo explained the decision plainly. "A performance has nothing to do with my personal life," he said. "I made a promise to the audience. Personal circumstances cannot intervene in that."

The production company behind Waiting for Godot, Park Company, had issued a statement at the time: Shin Goo had spent his entire career treating the audience as a commitment, and he was taking the stage both to honor the late and to fulfill his responsibility to the art.

The episode covers Shin Goo's full span, from his entry into acting at 26 during the era of Korea's currency reform to his current run in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. That range is part of what makes him unusual even within Korean theater: he is widely considered the most senior working actor in the country, and he has remained genuinely active rather than ceremonially present.

Speaking alongside him are several actors who trace their careers back to Shin Goo's influence. Jeon Moo-song trained with him at the Drama Center theater academy. Park Keun-hyung appeared opposite him in Waiting for Godot, a pairing that Korean theater audiences have followed for years. Actors Jang Young-nam, Jo Dal-hwan, Lee Sang-yun, and Park So-dam also appear, reflecting the breadth of the generations he has worked with and shaped.

One detail that emerges from the episode involves Shin Goo's scholarship work. He received a scholarship himself during his training at the Drama Center, and in 1987 he established the Shin Goo Scholarship at Seoul Institute of the Arts to support students in financial difficulty. Actor Yoo Hae-jin, one of its recipients, reflects on what it meant: "School was hard because I didn't have much. I think I was able to finish and keep acting because of the teacher's help."

Era Witnesses is structured as a 12-part series, with each episode focused on a figure who has defined one of twelve fields spanning culture, the arts, and media. Shin Goo opening the series is a deliberate signal about how EBS is positioning the project: not as a nostalgic look back, but as a document of what long professional commitment actually looks like, accumulation and all.