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 Kidnapped
Mike Thomson
Not many people can claim to have spent much time with the enigmatic North Korean leader, Kim Jong II. But film director Shin Sang Ok and his wife, Choe Eun-Hui, do have that dubious distinction. They didn't only know him well but spent several years living in his summerhouse. But they weren't his friends or house guests. They were his prisoners. Mrs Shin, an actress now in her late sixties, was the first to arrive after being kidnapped in Hong Kong by Kim Jong II's secret agents in 1978. The memories of that traumatic event still haunt her today: "I was really terrified. It was so frightening. I was in such a worried state I couldn't eat or drink anything for ages. I kept crying and crying. Finally I fainted and later learnt that they had injected me with some sort of sedative." Choe Eun-Hui was taken to the city's docks, bundled aboard a boat and taken on an eight day trip to Pyongyang. Her husband immediately flew from Seoul to Hong Kong to look for his wife and was himself kidnapped soon after: "Someone suddenly pulled a sack over my head and I couldn't see anything or breathe properly. They sprayed something inside the sack and I started to lose consciousness. A short while later I was wrapped in some kind of plastic sheeting and loaded onto a big ship by a crane." It wasn't long before the reason for their kidnapping was made clear. "Kim Jong Il later confessed to me that the reason he kidnapped my wife first was because he wanted me to come and make films for him. That's why he kidnapped her first." Kim Jong II is film mad. Soon after they arrived in Pyongyang he took them for a private tour of his film library which holds more than 15,000 movies. Keen to add to them he placed $2.5 million into an Austrian bank account and told Mr Shin that this money would be his with which to make "good" films. Initially the director wasn't sure what the North Korean leader meant by a "good" film until he took note of what he watched most often. Top of the list was Rambo, followed by Friday the Thirteenth and all James Bond movies. Over the next two years Mr Shin made more than 20 films, many of them propaganda tales commissioned by the man himself. Meanwhile his wife was given a large room in the leader's scenic summerhouse which overlooked the river. In a series of charm offensives Kim Jong II went out of his way to make her feel welcome by bringing her piles of expensive clothes and western cosmetics. But life in Pyongyang wasn't all film-making and ball gowns. Shin Sang Ok was sentenced to long terms in prison after twice trying to escape from North Korea. There he received re-education classes designed to teach him the error of his ways. "I was jailed for about five years but I didn't know at the time that it would land up being that long. If I had known from the start I would rather have been dead. During this time I was very, very depressed. They expected brainwashing to change me." They expected that. Did it work? "No, No!" he laughs. His wife was also ordered to attend re-education classes. She was forced to study North Korea's "glorious" revolution and later made to sit exams on the subject. "I was very unhappy. I did think of suicide but then I thought of my family and how much this would hurt them. It was an awful time." Finally, in 1986, the couple were given permission to travel abroad together for the first time since their arrival in North Korea eight years earlier. They went to a film festival in Vienna heavily chaperoned by a team of North Korean minders. They managed to persuade their guards to travel in a taxi behind as they headed for the festival hall. Choe Eun-Hui remembers how it wasn't long before they spotted their chance: "We got to a crossroads where we were supposed to turn left for the festival. Our minders car was following us about 30 metres behind but several other cars had got in between them and us. So we told our driver to turn right instead, towards the US Embassy." Seconds later the car behind realised that something was wrong and they radioed the taxi that the Shins were in and asked their driver to tell them which way he'd gone. The couple quickly handed him a sizeable tip and lied that they had gone in the opposite direction. Soon they arrived at the US Embassy but couldn't find anywhere to stop outside and the couple had to get out more than 30 metres down the road. "We tried to run as fast as we could but it felt like we were in some sort of slow motion movie. Finally we burst through the embassy's doors and crashing into each other. We asked for asylum." On hearing the news Kim Jong II became convinced that the couple had been kidnapped by the Americans and sent them a message offering to help them get them back to Pyongyang. It was an offer they could happily refuse. | |
| |  The film director Shin Sang Ok
Listen - Shin Sang Ok and wife Choe Eun-Hui relive their experiences 
 Shin Sang Ok and wife Choe Eun-Hui  "The Great Leader", Kim Jong Il |
