by Paul Fischer
At roughly 5 p.m. on October 19, Kim Jong-Il’s personal limousine took Shin and Choi to Kim’s office at the Central Committee Headquarters. In the back of the car Shin silently rehearsed his questions over and over. The Mercedes drove to a side entrance and through two heavy iron gates decorated with the symbol of the hammer, sickle, and writing brush, then pulled up to a stop. Kim’s office took up the whole of a small building, separate from the main building and heavily protected. Inside, an armed security guard sat at the reception desk; he sprang to his feet, saluted the distinguished guests, and ushered them through, without searching them. Shin and Choi were shown to the elevators and sent to the third floor.
Kim Jong-Il was waiting for them when the elevator doors slid open. He greeted them with a big smile. “It’s been a long time!” he exclaimed. “I’ve been so busy I haven’t even had the time to get together with you. I really must apologize.” Photographers were with him to commemorate the meeting. After a few pictures, the Dear Leader waved away the photographers, told Shin and Choi’s minder to wait outside, and went into a reception room alone with them.
Choi reached into her handbag and switched on the tape recorder.
* * *
The reception room was huge. On one side there was a large desk, on the other a few easy chairs and a round glass table. To the right of the desk, positioned to be viewed by the person seated behind it, were six television monitors. As soon as he entered, Kim turned on one of the televisions, bringing up the news on KBS, the South Korean Broadcasting Service. Immediately he switched it off, explaining that MBC, the other major South Korean network, “has a drama on at this hour” and flicking on another monitor. “Sa Mi-Ja is a good actress,” he added, instantly recognizing the relatively unknown actress in the scene. Having demonstrated his knowledge of foreign television, Kim then switched it off, turned back to his guests, and asked them to sit down as a young waiter brought in soft drinks and laid them on the table. “Let’s talk for about an hour,” he said, “then we’ll have dinner together.”
Kim spoke for two hours with barely a pause, of which Choi was only able to record forty-five minutes—a full side of the cassette, which she could not flip over. (Much later, when the tape eventually hit the media, it was a sensation, the first time the general public had ever heard Kim Jong-Il in candid private conversation.)
Kim Il-Sung’s adviser Hwang Jang-Yop once recalled that Jong-Il spoke extremely fast, to the point that many of his elders found him hard to understand “unless you completely focus,” Hwang said. Shin and Choi’s experience of him was the same. “[Kim’s] words poured out in rapid fire,” Shin remembered, “like a machine gun.… His voice was high and he spoke rapidly. He rambled on, often speaking in partial, ungrammatical sentences, moving to a new thought without ever finishing the previous one.” This was not the polished Dear Leader whom Shin had met on more public occasions. “He was completely different from when we met at the party. Perhaps because he was excited, his voice was like that of a man having an argument.… [He] launched into a long discussion that ran the gamut from his reasons for kidnapping us and the preparations for the kidnapping to the status of the North Korean film industry and the reasons for its backwardness. He never stopped to rest and the words just kept cascading forth in a stream. Once Kim started speaking, it was almost impossible for us to get a word in.”
The tape recording is simply extraordinary—so much so that, while it has been authenticated both by the CIA and KCIA, conspiracy theorists would later question its validity. It took no encouragement for Kim to explain, almost boastfully, their kidnappings. He had been informed, he told Shin, calling him sunsaeng (teacher), and addressing him throughout in formal pronouns rather than the familiar (much like vous and tu in French), “that you were the best director in South Korea. We were talking about film directors, and Choe Ik-Gyu said you’re the best. And knowing that you were born in North Korea”—another propaganda bonus—“it helped us to decide.” On the tape the Dear Leader can be heard laughing, with Shin and Choi joining in. “We learned your situation wasn’t very good in the South. You were having problems with Park Chung-Hee and we figured that Park was going to try to hang on to power for a long time and that it would be difficult for you to work in the South and you would try to work abroad.… We heard you wanted to go abroad to make films.”
“That was when my business license was canceled,” Shin helpfully offered.
“Yes, that’s right,” answered Kim. “So I thought, I’ve got to bring him here. But it’s going to be impossible to bring him here because he’s a man. Impossible, so we try to find a way to lure you, to entice you to come here. We needed something. So we brought Teacher Choi here to tempt you.” Again Jong-Il laughed and the couple joined in. “Frankly speaking … I absolutely needed you. So I began to covet you but there was nothing I could do. I told my comrades, if we want to get Director Shin here, we have to plan a covert operation to bring you here.” Just ten days before this conversation, on October 9, 1983, Kim Jong-Il had ordered an assassination bombing operation in Rangoon targeting South Korea’s president, Chun Doo-Hwan, while he was on a state visit to Burma. Chun, delayed in traffic, had survived, but twenty-one others died. “[But] even after bringing him here,” Kim continued without pause, “how do we make him feel at ease and happy? Then there was the unavoidable situation—I’m going to be very candid with you, so please don’t think badly of me—the fact that we kept the two of you separated from each other. It wasn’t my original intention. My comrades thought that if Madame Choi comes here, Teacher Shin will naturally come. But as you know, our working-level officials are too subjective and bureaucratic, so in dealing with the matter they did not handle it properly.…” This was Kim’s attempt at an apology, blaming his underlings. Jong-Il assured them both that the people responsible had been punished. “There have been a lot of problems.… Our comrades on the inside, and especially the comrades who carried out the operation, have fallen into subjectivism. They have gone through a great deal of self-criticism as a result. I’ve also conducted my own self-criticism. Because I never told my subordinates in detail what my plans were, I never told them just how we would use you.… I just said I need those two people; bring them here, so my comrades just carried out the operation. So in handling you, they put you in different guesthouses and treated you like prisoners, criminals. As a result, there have been a lot of misunderstandings.”
Kim had wanted them as guests, he explained, and he saw them as equals; the disrespect with which they had been treated was not his fault. He had faced reluctance from comrades, he continued, who did not believe that Shin and Choi truly wanted to “assist in upgrading the North’s film industry” but were here solely to please him. “My belief is that South Korean people—filmmakers—come to this side and feel real freedom, well—in making films, without trouble … my thoughts—well—for me—” On the tape Kim seems to get lost in his own speech and hesitates. There is a pause. “Take our country,” he finally continued. “North and South are facing off.… For a Communist country people can only travel to places that share our ideology. It’s impossible to go anywhere else. We are trading with Japan, but in practice, if we want to send our technicians there to learn and adopt new skills, Japan won’t accept them, because they have to make a show of a hostile attitude toward us. So I was thinking—yes, only in my head—my intention was, well, I hadn’t talked to anyone about this … I thought, what people have mastered Western skills that we don’t have here … who could come here to produce something with my support? Then we could flip the situation so we could culturally penetrate the West.… As you’ve seen in this country, people here only see inside this country. They are happy with what they are able to see. They’re not able to compare it with what others have on the outside.
“We’re on a lower level,” he added. “To speak honestly, South Koreans try hard to get things done—here people are different. Things are given to them. North Korean actors aren�
�t improving. They have no acting skills at all. In the South when you introduce a new actor, you make sure they’ll be better from film to film. When new faces are shown here, we cannot expect they’ll be any better in the next film. Here are two things I’ve analyzed. It’s needed that we invest in directors and in our actors and actresses. And, those people should work hard or else they can’t survive in the industry. Hard work is key to success.”
“I have felt that as well,” Shin answered. “I could use the resources here. I could teach technical skills—not just copying South Korean films but also being creative. I think it’s possible, so I’ve been longing for a meeting with you, Dear Leader,” he finished.
Kim seemed satisfied. “I told people: Shin and Choi came here because we have a superior system. You came here voluntarily. I didn’t say my real intentions. Some people have their doubts.… What my intentions were, well—it’s complicated. The fact is I am a politician who has wishes and desires. You were demanded by these wishes and desires. So you are here.
“It’s been difficult to talk about this.… We have to admit that we’re falling behind. We have to acknowledge that we are behind. I’m in the position to say it. If others said the same thing, they would be in trouble for criticizing the system. I am the only one who can say this. And I can only tell you two. There is nothing challenging when a film is made here. They [the crews] don’t try a single new thing, so they can’t improve. They repeat scenes we’ve already made before. We should make films that stay with you and give you something to think about later, an ideology.… Why do we only make rubbish?”
Kim promised he would protect Shin and give him whatever he needed. “I will be your shield,” he promised. “My intention is for you to show how you make films, and people here will naturally follow your path. You are pioneers.” He was getting excited now. “Why don’t you do this? You can say, when you meet outsiders, that there is no freedom in the South, no democracy. And that there is too much interference in the creative industries. There is only anticommunism. That’s what Yun I-Sang [a respected South Korean composer who was then in exile from his country] used to say, you know.”
“Well, I was kicked out from the United States when I was there,” Shin contributed.
“Right. You came here to find real freedom—that should be what’s said. Freedom of expression. We want to lead our film industry to become even more advanced than that of advanced countries. I think that would sound natural. Well,” he chuckled, “better than saying you were forcefully dragged here.” He interrupted himself to tell Shin and Choi a story about how, years ago, he had had a North Korean film shown to the Cambodian Film Festival, only for the country’s ruler, Norodom Sihanouk, to become offended because he thought the film was a metaphor supporting leftist Cambodian guerrilla groups. “We had to apologize several times because we hadn’t thought of that,” Kim said. “You see how small-minded we are. We don’t have any films we can show an international audience.”
The tape is inaudible for a moment, then resumes with Kim apologizing. “I am sorry that we haven’t pleased you so far,” he told Shin and Choi. “People here … they are stubborn. I’m worried we will become the world’s worst film industry. It will happen if we don’t do something now.”
“Dear Leader, how lucky these people are to work under a film fan like you,” Shin said.
“They must be pleased,” Choi added.
“They should try harder,” Kim answered. “They can even use me as an excuse if they try but fail to make our film industry better.”
“I’m impressed,” Shin said. They started talking about specific films, and the subject of The Star of Korea came up. Kim had thrown all his resources at the epic eight-part film series, going so far as casting an unknown in the lead and giving him extensive plastic surgery to make him closely resemble the young Supreme Leader (and then sending him down to work in production once the film had wrapped, never to appear in another picture again); but the movies were limp and lifeless. “It’s embarrassing to talk about openly,” Jong-Il admitted. “The Star of Korea is history. It is suitable for those who have a difficult time reading history, but it is not art. It could have been better, in a more artistic, more subtle way.” Shin agreed and Kim continued, “The state pays for everything for its people. They don’t need to fight for food. So, screenwriting has become just a hobby for the screenwriters in this system, because they don’t need to worry about making money to be fed. I told our propaganda workers once that there is a real problem in socialism: no incentive for success.”
“Maybe there should be a film award that filmmakers can get excited about,” Shin suggested.
“With the creative departments we can give that a go. But what about the crews? They don’t even have a sense of saving film rolls. They can waste as much of it as they feel like, because they don’t have to pay for it.… The North’s filmmakers are just doing perfunctory work. They don’t have any new ideas. Their works have the same expressions, redundancies, the same old plots. All our movies are filled with crying and sobbing. I didn’t order them to portray that kind of thing,” Kim insisted, again shirking responsibility. “I don’t know why they make movies that way…”
There was a brief silence and he went on more confidently. “This is only a transitional phenomenon and we’ll solve our film dilemma. I’m determined to overcome all the barriers to make people open their eyes to the creative mind. I [can] confess the truth only to you two people. I would appreciate it if you keep this a secret just between us.” It was unusual for the confident, authoritative, insolent young Leader to address his elders formally and call them Teacher, let alone ask for someone’s advice and follow their guidance; yet this was the surreal situation Shin and Choi suddenly found themselves in. Having spent most of the meeting pacifying his two guests, Jong-Il was now working toward the main point of his lecture.
“For the purpose of developing [the] industry,” he told Shin, “you must serve as a model so that our film directors will follow naturally. You will play the role of a pioneer. That was my intent when I brought you here, but your role goes further. It goes without saying,” Jong-Il added, “that you must say your defection to the North was of your own free will, and that the South’s democracy is bogus. It is a sham camouflaged with anti-communism. There is no genuine democracy. There is only anticommunism and interference in the creative work. You must say that because of the restrictions on art, you defected to the North where you could enjoy genuine freedom, the guaranteed freedom of creation.”
So Kim didn’t just want Shin and Choi to make movies for him. He wanted them to be a publicity tool for North Korea, personifications of the North’s superiority. They would be director and actress in their work but also the leading couple of North Korea’s deluded self-narrative.
Kim knew the story might be met with skepticism, especially since the outside world had heard nothing of Shin or Choi for five years. He had a solution to this problem, however. People would not jump to the conclusion that they were imprisoned in North Korea for the simple reason that they wouldn’t be.
He was sending them abroad.
24
Out of the North
Kim Jong-Il talked and talked, chain-smoking nonstop as the waiter patrolled in and out of the room, emptying ashtrays, refilling drinks, and keeping a watchful eye on the Dear Leader’s safety. As they overran the allocated hour for the meeting, Choe Ik-Gyu knocked on the door and poked his head in the office once, then twice. “Just wait outside for us,” Jong-Il said, waving him away. The older man could not have been happy at his exclusion from the talks.
“Deputy Director Choe is the right person to help bring about change in our film industry,” Jong-Il was saying, as the room filled with bluish cigarette smoke and the ashtray overflowed with crushed Rothmans. “He is well versed in motion pictures. He is the best man for this work.… But as you can see, Deputy Director Choe can’t do it all by himself.” North Korean cinema then consisted o
f two production companies, both under the leadership of the Paekdu Group, which Jong-Il himself oversaw. “I am asking you to set up one more production company,” he told Shin.
“Thank you very much,” Shin answered. “That’s exactly what I would like. If you do so, I would like to name the company Shin Film.” Five years later, and after everything he had gone through, the closing of his studio in Seoul still rankled. He wanted his name back at the front of a film’s credits. Shin didn’t expect Jong-Il to consent, since North Korean films didn’t have on-screen credits and no creative endeavor in the People’s Republic had ever been named after an individual other than the Supreme Leader. But Jong-Il shrugged. “Fine,” he said, “whatever you like. You will be the president and Teacher Choi the company’s vice president.” They discussed what films the new Shin Film would produce, and their end goal of participating in foreign film festivals, winning international awards, and maybe even securing commercial distribution abroad. Jong-Il stunned the two South Koreans by promising them funding of U.S. $2 million a year to be used “whenever you want”; the amount would rise each year, exponentially if they exceeded expectations. Shin and Choi would have the whole of the national industry at their disposal: they would be able to select cast and crew as they saw fit, to instruct other directors and producers according to their own principles, and to request any equipment they needed. Jong-Il would approve every film’s subject, or better yet conceive it in tandem with Shin; Choi would star in as many of them as possible and, following her role as academy head at the Anyang school of performing arts, would train the current generation of actors and actresses of the Korea Film Studio. And, crucially, Shin and Choi would be traveling abroad, both to shoot films and to attend film festivals, as the new faces of North Korean cinema.