A Kim Jong-Il Production: The Extraordinary True Story of a Kidnapped Filmmaker & His Star Actress

In 1978, North Korea’s Kim Jong-Il, who at that time was 30 years old and only the son of the dictator, kidnapped a super famous, middle aged South Korean actress named Choi Eun-Hee, who was basically the Elizabeth Taylor of Asia. Six months later he kidnapped Shin Sang-Ok, Choi’s ex-husband and South Korea’s most famous filmmaker.

The eight years that follow these kidnappings are unbelievable and insane, and the story will be told to you by Paul Fischer, author of the new book A Kim Jong-Il Production.

So, at the time, Kim Jong-Il ran North Korea’s propaganda film studio. He produced every film made in the country and was film obsessed.

“Kim Jong-Il had the biggest personal film collection in the world,” Fischer says. “Ironically, it was for his eyes only. No one else in North Korea other than him, literally, was allowed to go into that building and watch the films.”

But North Korea’s films were not good, and he knew it.

“He loved James Bond films and horror films and Sean Connery pictures, Rambo. But he couldn’t tell the people working for him to make that kind of film, he couldn’t even show them those films, because they were considered to be imperialist American propaganda. So in his mind he had to get outsiders, which was Shin and Choi, to whom he could say, ‘I can’t admit this to my people, but we need to make films that are more entertaining, that are better.'”

So he kidnapped Choi and Shin and treated them like royalty, parading them around to parties like his own personal dolls.

“She was put in a villa, she was kept under 24/7 watch, she was given every gift that she wanted. She was treated luxuriously, given banquets at every meal.”

But before the couple could start making movies for Kim Jong-Il, he needed them to fall back in love.

“Kim Jong-Il wanted to direct everything. In his mind the story of this couple that he’d kidnapped could only have the perfect happy ending if they got back together and remarried. Luckily, they fell back in love, that kind of very real love.”

And then the filmmaking began.

“He wanted the people around the world, not just North Korea, to see the films. People would start asking whether Shin and Choi was making the films voluntarily or whether they’re being forced into it. So Kim Jong-Il made them give a press conference in which they said they voluntarily came to North Korea, that they were there because they wanted to be there. Not only that, he started sending them abroad for the occasional film shoot, for press conferences, for film festivals. The idea was that would give the impression they weren’t kidnapped. That if they were free to travel around the world, people would be convinced that they were, in fact, free.”

Unlike other production companies, under Kim Jong-Il, Shin had no budget to abide by and absolute filmmaking freedom. Which was very tantalizing after his own production shut down by the government in South Korea before the kidnapping.

“So there’s one famous story where, for the end of one film, the script called for a train to be blown up. Shin told Kim Jong-Il, ‘I don’t think we have people who have the expertise in miniatures and special effects here so we can do this believably.’ Kim Jong-Il just sent him a full sized train, packed with explosives, to blow up for the scene. Kind of telling him, ‘If you need another one, let me know.’ It was that kind of scale of film making. If they needed a far away, snowy location they were flown to a far away, snowy location. If they needed wind machines, they were given helicopters. There was literally nothing they could ask for that they wouldn’t get.”

Since Day One, when Shin and Choi were reunited by Kim Jong-Il in North Korea, they started plotting an escape. But as time went on, Choi became more miserable and missed their children, but Shin actually enjoyed himself.

“He felt all the normal human things. But he also felt, as an obsessive filmmaker, that he was never, ever going to work in these kinds of conditions ever again. And he would say, for the rest of his life, that the best films he made were in North Korea. Which isn’t true, and I think even he knew that. When he thinks of creative freedom he thought of North Korea. And also found himself liking Kim Jong-Il and kind of thinking of him as the perfect film producer. So he found himself in this weird, creative, professional Stockholm Syndrome.”

Finally, the couple did escape when they were on a film trip to Austria. They convinced their bodyguards to wait for them outside of a restaurant, and managed to hop in a cab.

“Made a beeline for the American embassy, burst out of the car, ran in and asked for asylum. Which they were given because they were the first people to have been close to Kim Jong-Il. They had a tape recording of him, they had pictures of him. So they had a lot of intelligence that the CIA, at the time, were very interested in.”

Shin and Choi were then secretly smuggled into the United States.

“In burqas and turbans and big sunglasses by CIA agents. They lived in Virginia for three years with live-in CIA babysitters for their own protection. And they did need protection because Kim Jong-Il put a price on their heads immediately and called them traitors and thieves.”

After a few more years in Hollywood, where they struggled to make films and with the language barrier, they eventually moved back to South Korea.

“There’s a lot of people in South Korea, even today, who don’t believe they were kidnapped. So the rest of their life after escaping was kind of a mixed bag. The world had moved on without them. To accept that their kids had grown up, to accept that they wouldn’t make films anymore. You know, they had a sad, isolated last couple of decades.”

Today, Choi is 89 years old and living in South Korea. Shin passed away in 2006.