A Hong Kong kidnap: how Kim Jong-il had South Korea's top actress abducted from Repulse Bay
A recent book tells the extraordinary story of the kidnapping in Repulse Bay, Hong Kong, of film star Choi Eun-hee - who died on April 16, 2018 - and director Shin Sang-ok on the orders of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il.
Before becoming a notorious dictator, Kim Jong-il ran North Korea's Ministry for Propaganda and its film studios. Acting as producer and screenwriter, he was behind every movie made in the country.
Unimpressed by the home-grown talent available to him, Kim decided to import some and, in July 1978, he ordered the kidnapping of South Korea's most famous actress, Choi Eun-hee, then 52, and her ex-husband, filmmaker Shin Sang-ok. The ex-couple, who had been partners in the Shin Film Company, were captured and did not escape the clutches of North Korea until 1986. On a trip to Vienna that year, they requested political asylum at the United States embassy.
Shin was kidnapped in Hong Kong's Repulse Bay. Choi's ordeal - as recounted in the recent book A Kim Jong-il Production: The Extraordinary True Story of a Kidnapped Filmmaker, His Star Actress, and a Young Dictator's Rise to Power, by Paul Fischer - had begun almost six months before, in the same seaside location.
The following is an edited extract from Fischer's book:
Choi Eun-hee stared into the rumbling ocean waters below and told herself to jump. The freighter groaned and vibrated under her feet as it plowed through the waves, spreading white foam on either side of the hull. Do it, Choi thought. Jump in and it will all be over.
Hesitating, she looked to the horizon. In the distance, Chinese fishing ships gently bobbed in the water, the smoke of their cooking fires rising thin and white against the blue sky. The freighter rushed past them and they were gone.