North Korea’s Stolen Filmmaker: The Story of Shin Sang-ok and Choi Eun-hee

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Well tonight We're going to be talking about is the
story of North Korea's stolen filmmaker. The story of Shin
song oke and Choi Unhi one of the strangest spy
tales of the twentieth century. North Korea orchestrated the abduction
of a celebrated South Korean film couple to jumpstart its
propaganda machine. The targets were Shin sang ok, one of

(00:24):
South Korea's most famous directors, and his former wife Choi unh.
In nineteen seventy eight, Choi was lured to Hong Kong
under the guise of a business meeting. There, she was drugged, kidnapped,
and taken a pong. Months later, Shin, while searching for
his missing ex wife, was also abducted. The mastermind behind
the plot was Kim Jong Ayle, who at the time
was overseeing North Korea's film industry and was frustrated by

(00:46):
his poor quality. Convinced that better films could shape the
regime's international image, he forced the pair to make movies
for him. Over the next several years, Shin and Choi
worked under surveillance, but were treated with relative privilege compared
to ordinary North Koreans. They were even remarried to Kim's assistance.
Between nineteen eighty three and nineteen eighty six, they directed

(01:07):
and produced a series of films, including Pool Gasati, a
monster movie reminiscent of Godzilla. Kim reportedly attended screenings with
them and gave detailed notes, aspiring to be a film
producer himself. Despite outward appearances of loyalty, Shin and Choyd
secretly plotted their escape in nineteen eighty six. While in
Vienna for a film festival, they slipped away from their

(01:28):
guards and sought asylum went to the US embassy. Their
dramatic defection exposed North Korea's bizarre kidnapping scheme. The episode
revealed the extent of Kim Jong eel's obsession with cinema
and demonstrated how far an authoritarian regime would go to
harness culture as a weapon.