I am fascinated with North Korea. A secretive weird country with a brutal government who’s Supreme leader is totally bat shit. Their needs to be a section on this blog that is just crazy North Korea stories. Ive been reading a book on Kim Jong-il and fell out of my chair laughing at this one.
In 1978, actress Choi Eun-hee, recently divorced from Shin, was kidnapped from Hong Kong to North Korea. When Shin traveled to Hong Kong to investigate, he was kidnapped as well. The kidnappings were on orders of future leader Kim Jong-il, who wanted to establish a film industry for his country to sway international opinion regarding the views of the Workers’ Party of Korea. The North Korean authorities have denied the kidnapping accusations, claiming that Shin came to the country willingly. Shin and Choi made secret audio tapes of conversations with Kim Jong-il, supporting their story. Now if you’re going to get kidnapped and have your life depend on how good the movie is, that should be one hell of a fuckin movie. This is that movie…..Pulgasari
From 1983 Shin directed seven films with Kim Jong-il acting as an executive producer. The best known of these films is Pulgasari, a giant-monster film similar to the Japanese Godzilla. In 1986, eight years after his kidnapping, Shin and his wife escaped while in Vienna for a business meeting, before eventually fleeing to the United States, seeking political asylum.
