Shocking! North Korean Dictator Kim Jong il Kidnapped South Korean Actress to make films

By Benson | Published: July 4, 2020 03:20 PM2020-07-04T15:20:04+5:302020-07-04T15:20:04+5:30

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Whenever North Korea is mentioned, it is more for the weird. There is always talk of the current dictator Kim Jong Un making strict rules here. But not only is Kim Jong Un controversial, but his father, Kim Jong Il, is also a controversial figure.

In fact, the late Kim’s movie mania was so intense that in 1978, he kidnapped a famous actress and a director from South Korea and forced them to make 17 films.

The actress, Choi Eun-hee, and her director-husband, Shin Jeong-gyun, were a celebrity couple during the Golden Age of South Korean cinema. They reached their professional peak during the 1960s; but by the late ‘70s, Shin’s financial problems and troubles with the then-totalitarian South Korean government had stalled his filmmaking.

In addition, his affair with a younger actress had broken up his marriage to Choi, who was also struggling to find work. It was during this time that Choi received an invitation to travel to Hong Kong and discuss a business opportunity—something she wasn’t in a position to pass up. Unbeknownst to Choi, the offer was a set up by North Korean agents.

When she arrived in Hong Kong, an agent led her to a speedboat where a group of men captured her.Upon arrival in North Korea, she was perversely greeted as though she were a celebrity visiting of her own free will. In an interview for the 2016 documentary The Lovers and the Despot, the nearly 90-year-old Choi recalled that photographers took her picture as her captor, Kim Jong-il, stretched out his hand and said, “Thanks for coming.”

Kim was at the time the chief of North Korea’s Propaganda and Agitation Department (his father, Kim Il-sung, was still president). He fancied himself a cinephile, publishing the book On the Art of the Cinemain 1973, and reportedly collecting over 30,000 films during his lifetime (including a lot of porn).

At the propaganda department, he helmed North Korea’s production of manipulative state films. Yet according to secret recordings that Choi made of Kim after her capture, he was disappointed with these movies and jealous of those coming out of South Korea.

Why do all of our films have the same ideological plots?” he asked in one of Choi’s rare recordings of his voice. “There’s nothing new about them. Why are there so many crying scenes? All of our films have crying scenes. This isn’t a funeral. Is it? We don’t have any films that get into film festivals.” Kim desperately wanted North Korean films to receive international recognition, and he thought Shin was the man to improve the country’s film quality.

Kim had his agents bring the director to North Korea a few months after Choi, whom Kim may have used to lure Shin. South Koreans still dispute whether Shin was kidnapped or went willingly. In any case, Shin tried to escape once he was in North Korea, and authorities punished him by sending him to a prison work camp. For five years, Kim held Shin and Choi captive without knowledge of one other. Shin spent those years in prison camps, and Choi spent that time in isolation, not realizing that her ex-husband was in the country. Finally, in 1983, Kim invited the former couple to his birthday party so he could “introduce” them. It was a shocking, emotional reunion. Soon after, Kim put them to work making films at a breakneck pace. “In two years and three months, we made 17 films,” Choi said in The Lovers and the Despot. “We only slept two or three hours a night, and worked day and night.