The Extraordinary True Story of Kim Jong-Il’s kidnapping of the golden couple of South Korean Cinema, The Movies They Were Forced to Make, and Their Daring Escape.
Before becoming the world’s most notorious dictator, Kim Jong-Il ran North Korea’s Ministry for Propaganda and all its film studios. Underwhelmed by the pool of talent available to him he took drastic steps, ordering the kidnap of Choi Eun-Hee (Madame Choi) – South Korea’s most famous actress – and her ex-husband Shin Sang-Ok, the country’s most famous filmmaker. But as Madame Choi and Shin Shang-Ok begin to make North Korea’s greatest films, they hatch a plan of escape worthy of a blockbuster Hollywood ending. A Kim Jong-Il Production is that rarest of books: a wildly entertaining, cunningly told story that offers a rare glimpse into a nation still wrapped in mystery.
“Gripping… A Kim Jong-Il Production tells the absurd, harrowing, and true story of Choi and Shin's ordeal, which reveals the importance of film as propaganda to the North Korean regime.” —Esquire.com “The 1978 abductions of the South Korean actress Choi-Eun-He and her ex-husband, the director Shin Sang-Ok, in Hong Kong is the true crime at the center of Paul Fischer's gripping and surprisingly timely new book.” —The New York Times “An entertaining new book…details how [Shin and Choi] finally seized their chance to seek asylum…A stupefying, novelistic read.” —The Boston Globe
“Fischer's entertaining narrative paints an arresting portrait of a North Korean "theater state," forced to enact the demented script of a sociopathic tyrant.” —Publishers Weekly
“Paul Fischer's book A Kim Jong-Il Production is a highly illuminating deep dive on the middle Kim's cinematic obsessions and the film arms race between the two Koreas.” —The Washington Post
“Exhaustively researched, highly engrossing chronicle of the outrageous abduction of a pair of well-known South Korean filmmakers by the nefarious network of North Korea's Kim Jong-Il.”—Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)
PAUL FISCHER is a film producer who studied social sciences at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques in Paris and film at the University of Southern California and the New York Film Academy. Paul's first feature film, the documentary Radioman, won the Grand Jury Prize at the Doc NYC film festival and was released to critical and commercial acclaim. A Kim Jong-Il Production is his first book.
Table of Contents
A Note on Sources Cast of Characters Introduction - August 1982 Reel One: A Sense of Destiny 1. A Photograph on the Blue House Lawn 2. Director Shin and Madame Choi 3. Shrimp Among Whales 4. A Double Rainbow over Mount Paekdu 5. Kim Jong-Il's First Loves 6. Fathers and Sons 7. Inside the Pyongyang Picture Show 8. A Three-Second Kiss 9. Repulse Bay Reel Two: Guests of the Dear Leader 10.The Hermit Kingdom 11. Accused 12. Muscials, Movies, and Ideological Studies 13. Taken 14. The Others 15. Escape from Chestnut Valley 16. Shin Sang-Ok Died Here 17. The Torture Position 18. Division 39 19. The Hunger Strike 20. Director Shin is Coming Intermission: The People's Actress Woo In-Hee Reel Three: Produced by Kim Jong-Il 21. Together 22. The Tape Recorder 23. Lights, Camera... 24. Out of the North 25. Like a European Movie 26. The Press Conference 27. Same Bed, Different Dreams 28. A Full Shooting Schedule 29. The Rubber Monster 30: Vienna 31. From Kim to Kim 32. The Stars and Stripes Epilogue - 2013 Afterword
