A Kim Jong-Il Production

by Paul Fischer

  “I never thought it would come to that—” Kim stammered.

  “Don’t you have any conscience?”

  “I didn’t know that would happen. I was taken in by that woman.”

  “I have nothing else to say to you. Get out of here.”

  “I didn’t intend to do anything wrong. I was just a middleman—”

  “Get him out of here.”

  * * *

  The Hong Kong police arrested Kim, had his work visa revoked, and sent him back to Seoul, where he would eventually be convicted of breaching the National Security Law by consorting with North Korean citizens and given a fifteen-year prison sentence. Though everything was making more sense to Shin now, it offered him no comfort. Using Mrs. Lee, the North Koreans had paid off both Kim and the Chinese Wang Dong-Il to get Choi to Hong Kong, and from there had taken matters into their own hands. But there the trail ended. Shin had no idea what had happened next or how to go about finding out. Wang had since disappeared back to the mainland, and no one had been with Choi but Mrs. Lee—who was gone too. The North Koreans must have wanted Choi for a reason to go to so much trouble, Shin reasoned, which meant she was likely alive—but she had a bad heart, and what if the stress…?

  To make matters worse, Shin couldn’t afford to stay in Hong Kong. It was late March already. South Korean passports were restrictive and issued only for one-, five-, or ten-year terms linked to the bearer’s travel needs, and Shin’s would expire in the summer, just a few months away. Once that happened his future travels would be at the mercy of the same authorities who had unjustly revoked his filmmaking license. He couldn’t let that happen.

  For the next four months, Shin traveled as far and as widely as he could afford to. All he needed was one film to be green-lit somewhere—anywhere that would offer him a resident visa—and his life would be back on track. He went to Japan looking for films to distribute and met the screenwriter Ryuzo Kikushima to discuss First Blood. Someone told him it was easier to get U.S. visas when applying from France, because South Koreans could enter the country visa-free, so he tried that, but with no luck. He stopped in West Germany to apply for political asylum, but the legal procedure was too expensive for his dwindling savings. A distributor in Singapore expressed interest in distributing some of Shin Film’s existing films, which would at least refill the coffers, but was slow to confirm the agreement.

  Events, unexpectedly, led back to Hong Kong. Shin had a bank account there, and the last remaining subsidiary of Shin Film was also based in Hong Kong. From there he could decide which of his remaining realistic options to choose: return to Seoul, or go to West Germany and spend what money he had left on an uncertain asylum application.

  It was mid-July. His passport expired on August 9.

  * * *

  Shin hung up the phone. He was sitting in the Shin Film office and had just finished speaking to his brother in Seoul. Reluctantly, he had promised to give up on West Germany and return to Seoul. The government had relaxed its Motion Picture Law, his brother had said; maybe they could get a new license and start a new company. Shin had agreed to come home only to placate his brother and put an end to the conversation. In truth, he had no idea what he would do.

  He slumped in his chair, exhausted. He had worked his whole life to build a film empire and here he was, nearly fifty-two years old, broke, divorced, out of a job, and at a loss to locate anyone, anywhere in the world, who wanted to give him one. He still thought of Choi every day, but it was starting to sink in that he would probably never see her again or find out what had happened to her. He thought sadly of his children and their anguish that their mother wasn’t with them and never would be.

  Lee Young-Seng, the director of the Hong Kong office, was watching him in silence. Finally he said, “Director Shin, I think I might have a solution. Will you tell me what you think?”

  “A solution?” Shin answered.

  “Yes, a way to resolve the problem with your passport.” Gingerly, Lee told Shin he knew someone who could get him a genuine passport from a Central American country for $10,000. Shin was skeptical, but it wasn’t unheard of. Eichmann and other Nazis had escaped to Argentina in 1945 under fake travel and identity papers. And in Southeast Asia, a crossroads for trafficking—drugs, wildlife, people—there was rumored to be a thriving black market for stolen and forged passports. Lee’s idea sounded risky but also irresistible—what if it worked? It wouldn’t solve all of Shin’s problems, but it was a start: he wouldn’t be forced to return to South Korea and would be able to travel, explore his options and, he hoped, find somewhere new to make films—and money.

  Ten thousand dollars was a third of what Shin had left. He looked up at Lee.

  “Can I trust this guy?”

  “Of course.”

  “Okay,” Shin said, nodding. “I’ll do it.”

  * * *

  Neon shopping signs flickered to life in the fading evening light as the car drove into Repulse Bay. Shin gazed out the window at the few villas dotted along the hill. The bright lights in the windows came on as the sun sank behind the horizon. The people living in those houses with their families must be happy, he reflected. Somehow the thought made him feel depressed.

  Shin and Lee had taken the ferry from Kowloon, where the office was located, to Hong Kong Island. The white Mercedes and chauffeur had been waiting for them on the other end, sent by Lee’s contact. They’d driven through the main tourist area, past the villas and resorts, and now they were leaving even the more remote homes in their rearview mirror.

  Suddenly the car screeched to a halt. Four long-haired men were blocking the road. They walked up to the car, yanked open the passenger door, and pulled Shin out. One of them put a flick knife to his throat.

  “Give me money!” he hissed in broken English.

  “Please—don’t—just take my money,” Shin stammered. He reached for his pocket, but suddenly another one of the men slipped a nylon bag over his head and unfurled it all the way down to his feet, covering his whole body. A rope was tied around his ankles. Shin panicked, starting to run out of air, but then he heard the sound of fabric ripping and felt the knife’s blade slicing just an inch away from his nose. Fresh air rushed in, cool against his face. As he opened his mouth to take a deep breath, one of the men pressed a bottle to the jagged opening and sprayed a liquid in Shin’s face. The smell of it burned his nostrils. Within a few seconds he had passed out.

  When he blinked back to blurry consciousness, he felt himself being carried. He could hear waves hitting the shore just under him. That’s it, he thought. They had robbed him and they were going to kill him. He was going to end his life at the bottom of the ocean inside a nylon bag.

  The men carrying him stopped. Shin thought he heard a motorboat in the distance, growing closer.

  “I wonder if the comrade doctor is on the boat,” one of the men said, his voice close to Shin’s ear, startling him.

  Shin felt his body flood with relief. He wasn’t going to die after all.

  His relief was short-lived. The man’s accent was North Korean.

  * * *

  Shin’s journey was much the same as Choi’s. He woke on the same freighter, in the same cabin, with the same smiling, Santa Claus–like face of Kim Il-Sung beaming down at him. He, too, was told he was being delivered to the People’s Republic “to answer the call of the Great Leader.”

  When Shin asked one of the omnipresent guards where the Chinese man who was traveling with him had gone, the guard laughed. “You think Lee Young-Seng is Chinese? He’s one of us!” The man thought it hilarious that Shin had been duped for years. Shin asked another crew member whether Choi Eun-Hee was all right. Was she in Pyongyang? The man shrugged. He didn’t know, but he’d heard the South Korean intelligence service had kidnapped and executed her for cooperating with the North’s army during the Korean War. Utter nonsense, Shin thought. Or was it?

  After three days the freighter weighed anchor near Nampo and Shin was transferr
ed to a small motorboat and taken to shore. There was no personal welcome from Kim Jong-Il for him, just two men in Mao-collared tunics standing by a Mercedes-Benz.

  “Welcome to the Socialist Fatherland,” one of them said.

  It was still afternoon when they drove him through Pyongyang, and Shin—who was born in the North but hadn’t been able to set foot there since the division in 1945—found himself entering a city he hadn’t seen in over thirty years. Only Pyongyang looked nothing like it used to. The wide boulevards corresponded to none of the previous streets. All the buildings were new and made of concrete, many of them covered in tiles, “look[ing] exactly like the inside of a public bathhouse,” Shin wrote. As a city it was, simply, otherworldly. The monuments looked fake, the statues hollow. There were no shops, no restaurants, no billboards, no signs for businesses, no outdoor seating, no kiosks, no delis, no cafés, no bars, no street vendors. The entire city was empty of commerce, empty of vehicles, empty of old people and animals, empty of any cheer, noise, or joy. There were no street names, no signs on official buildings. Kim Il-Sung’s face, though, was everywhere: from statues to posters to the giant propaganda hoardings and placards on the rooftops. “No one was out in the streets,” Shin noticed. “[The city] was as silent as a grave.” Revolutionary songs and propaganda drifted, faintly, from concealed loudspeakers everywhere.

  Shin was driven to a villa about an hour outside of Pyongyang, in an area he was told was called the Chestnut Valley. The villa’s screening room was ready and staffed for him. The cosmetics he used at home were lined up in the bathroom and the wardrobe was fully stocked with suits, shirts, ties, cuff links, underwear, socks, and casual wear. The shirts fit Shin exactly, down to his large 16½-inch collar and his short thirty-two-inch sleeves. When he sat down for dinner, a steel dish of cold broth full of noodles was placed in front of him.

  “I understand,” his guard said casually, “that your favorite dish is cold noodles.”

  For the next two months Shin lived inside that house. He never met or spoke to Kim Jong-Il, although he was told more than once that “everything is being done on special instructions from the Dear Leader Comrade Kim Jong-Il.” A man everyone called Comrade Deputy Director came every day to look after his reeducation, acquainting him with Kim Il-Sung’s glorious life and career, and occasionally took him on sightseeing day trips. If Shin asked after Choi, the deputy director flew into a rage and scolded him.

  Shin glimpsed Kim Jong-Il once, in the front row of a performance at the Mansudae Art Theater, recognizing him by the way everyone stood and applauded when Kim did, someone shouting out “Long live the Comrade Dear Leader!”

  “When we left the theater,” Shin recalled, “it was dark. The fountain out in front of the theater was spewing water high in the air, bathed in a sea of multicolored lights. It was time for the changing of the guard at the building, and a column of goose-stepping soldiers marched past. For the first time I really felt I was in North Korea.”

  He would feel that same disquieting recognition once more just a few weeks later. September 9 was Independence Day, the anniversary of the founding of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and the end of the Arirang Festival, a monthlong series of festivities. On that morning the deputy director brought Shin a badge in the shape of a red flag with Kim Il-Sung’s smiling face pasted on it, and showed Shin how to pin it on “with the proper reverence.” Then he drove Shin to the Pyongyang People’s Gymnasium, where they took their reserved seats in the VIP section. Twenty thousand screaming people packed the rows of seats all around the indoor stadium. The roar was deafening.

  The Arirang Festival was named after a folk story representing the division of Korea, in which a young couple is torn apart by an evil landlord. It has since become known as the Mass Games, famous for its goose-stepping army parades, highly choreographed gymnastic demonstrations, and huge mosaic pictures created by tens of thousands of trained audience members holding colored cards up in the air at the right time. All of the performances are by ordinary citizens, who can be chosen as early as their fifth birthday, and for the rest of their lives much of their time, every single year, is spent training and preparing for the event. Kim Jong-Il had invented the Mass Games in 1972, for his father’s sixtieth birthday, and it was one of the ways he hoped to demonstrate his virtues as an heir. The games were at the center of what came to be known as “succession art,” write historians Heonik Kwon and Byung-Ho Chung, “considering that the central objective of the era’s artistic production was to sublimate Kim Il-Sung’s authority in preparation for transforming his personal charisma into a historical, hereditary charisma” that could be passed on to Kim Jong-Il.

  Shin stood at his seat and looked down. He could see Kim Il-Sung at the front of the VIP section, the Chinese premier Deng Xiaoping and other foreign dignitaries filling the seats by his side. Kim Il-Sung looked fatter than in his official portraits, which were all paintings, and what looked like a large tumor swelled on the back of his neck. After a while Kim Il-Sung stood at the main platform and gave a ceremonial speech. Every few sentences he was interrupted by the loud, rapturous applause of the crowd. Across from him students held up colored placards to create a mosaic of the North Korean flag. Then, with the greatest of ease, they formed Kim Il-Sung’s face among undulating waves and floating clouds. Shin had never before seen such a large, well-coordinated crowd—nor had he ever felt so completely alone.

  Choi Eun-Hee sat in a different section of the stadium that day, maybe even—if either of them had happened to look carefully—within view of her ex-husband. This was the first time in her nine months in the country that she had seen a North Korean celebration that involved ordinary citizens. Everyone around her was applauding endlessly, clapping so hard and for so long that her hands hurt trying to keep up. It was clear to her that everyone in the arena adored Kim Il-Sung as “the absolute being,” she wrote later. Will I someday applaud with as much fervor as them? she asked herself. As she watched the cards flip and change, she thought of the young people holding them—how long it took them to prepare, how they were treated, whether they had time to do anything else or have any fun. She looked down at the field full of children, waiting in their colorful uniforms for their turn to perform, and noticed that some of the children, who were not allowed out of the ranks in case they disturbed the flow of events, were wetting themselves where they stood.

  The show lasted for several hours. Neither Shin nor Choi knew the other was in the same building that day.

  14

  The Others

  Choi knew nothing of her ex-husband’s arrival, yet it was around that time that Kim Jong-Il stopped inviting her to his parties.

  No official reason was given, but Jong-Il had become more and more preoccupied with affairs of state lately. He was playing an increasingly central role. In September 1978 he made a rare, highly visible appearance, meeting foreign guests arriving to celebrate the Arirang Festival and the thirtieth anniversary of the founding of the DPRK. In December he introduced a new national slogan, “Let’s live our own way,” an indicator that North Korean policy was moving away from socialism, and from now on would be about nationalism.

  Choi kept requesting to see the Dear Leader, hoping to plead again for her return to South Korea, but no answers were forthcoming. He did send Choi gifts almost daily: boxes of bespoke clothes for every season, textiles, fur coats, cosmetics. He also sent copies of every single picture taken of her by his photographers, from her arrival at Nampo Harbor through the parties and sightseeing visits. As time passed, Choi sank into a depression. Having Hak-Sun’s company made the days bearable, but “when she went to her quarters at night,” Choi says, “I was overcome with nostalgia and anxiety and terror. I would go into the bathroom and turn on the water full force and just sit there and cry.” She found that after midnight, when the military scrambling had been turned off, the two radios by her bed picked up a South Korean frequency. She listened to it every night, the blankets p
ulled over her and the radio to muffle the sound. “It was my only pleasure, my only consolation.”

  And then Kim Hak-Sun was removed, too. There was no good-bye. One morning she was just gone from the house. “She returned to Pyongyang for good,” Choi was told by the other attendants. This new, additional loss confirmed to Choi that, in all likelihood, she would spend the rest of her life without purpose in this surreal prison just a couple of hundred miles from her homeland. Once a famous actress with friends, family, and a career, she now found herself in an alternate universe where people spoke her language but where she was unable to relate to anything. She couldn’t eat, she couldn’t sleep. When she did drift off she was haunted by nightmares of her children, whom she was sure she would never see again. She thought of suicide, but the pain it would cause her loved ones was too high a price to pay. “It was an awful time,” she says.

  As the weather got warmer her instructors, fulfilling a promise made earlier by Kim Jong-Il, took her to a lakeside villa for a fishing weekend. On the first day, as she was headed down to the water, she passed “a large house surrounded by a concrete wall and a barbed-wire fence” by the side of the path. As she walked by the wall a sharp voice behind it anxiously cried out, “Who are you?” Choi’s attendant asked her to wait and went to the house’s gate, just a few feet away. When he returned he hurried her back up the path. “We should go back,” he muttered. “This area is off-limits.”

  A couple of days later Choi was in a fishing boat with Mr. Kang and an attendant when she saw the same house in the distance. A woman stood in its front courtyard, walking in and out of the lake. She wore a light green gown, the hem of it drifting over the surface of the water, her hair carelessly tied and gently fluttering in the breeze. She looked sad and refined.

  Staring at her with fascination, Choi couldn’t help notice that keeping a watchful eye on the woman was a pair of attendants just like her own.