Mafo Laure
마포 로르 Cameroon / France 🇨🇲🇫🇷
Pansori singer
A pansori singer connecting the world through Korean song
Mafo Laure is a pansori singer, born in Cameroon and raised in France, who left a corporate career at Samsung Electronics France and Coca-Cola to devote herself to pansori, Korea's traditional art of sung storytelling.
In 2015, while studying Korean at the Korean Cultural Center in Paris, she heard master singer Min Hye-sung perform and was moved beyond words. After two years of preparation she moved to Seoul in 2017, studied Korean at Yonsei University and graduated in pansori from the Korea National University of Arts. Today she performs classic pansori as well as new pansori that tells stories from Cameroon.
She performed at the 2018 Korea–France summit state dinner at the Élysée Palace and at the 2024 Korea–Africa Summit, and won the top excellence award at the 2019 National Pansori Competition and the 2023 Park Dong-jin Pansori Competition (foreign division).
An honorary citizen of Seoul since 2021, Laure has served as an ambassador for the Yeongdong World Gugak Expo, the Seoul 120 Dasan Call Foundation, the Seoul Immigration Office and the Cultural Heritage Recovery Foundation. Korean viewers know her from You Quiz on the Block (tvN), My Little Old Boy (SBS) and My Neighbor, Charles (KBS). She works in French and Korean, and brings three cultures to every stage.
On her YouTube channel, Laurerangarirang, she sings pansori in French and experiments with bringing pansori and African music together.
- 2026 First foreign-born singer to perform the complete Heungbo-ga — solo recital “Walking the Path of Sound” (National Gugak Center, Umyeondang)
- 2018 Élysée Palace performance, Korea–France summit state dinner
- 2024 Korea–Africa Summit performance
- 2023 Top excellence award, Park Dong-jin Pansori Master Singers & Drummers Competition (foreign division)
- 2019 Top excellence award, National Pansori Competition
- Honorary Citizen of Seoul (since 2021)
