by Paul Fischer
This was a miraculous stroke of luck. Their current life in North Korea was one of imprisonment at the heart of a set of prisons of increasing size, one inside the other, like Russian dolls: the guarded villa inside the fenced compound inside the Pyongyang perimeter inside the heavily patrolled North Korean borders. Going abroad, even if they remained heavily guarded by around-the-clock “attendants,” as they were in Pyongyang, unscrewed the heads of the outer matryoshkas and removed their layers. Surely somehow an opportunity for escape would present itself.
Jong-Il called Director Choe back into the room. “Have them photographed for passport pictures,” he instructed. “Have their passports issued tomorrow.” Choe nodded and led the couple to a photography studio in another part of the building. A photographer took pictures of them separately and together. In the joint shot, Shin is in a dark suit and striped tie, his hand resting on the back of an expensive-looking occasional chair made of wood and flowered embroidery, on which sits Choi, in a white jacket and skirt and darker blouse, her hands clasped in her lap. In the photos she is clearly still better at faking a happy smile than Shin is.
When the photo session was over Shin and Choi were walked to the central Party building’s dining room, where Kim Jong-Il and a handful of film industry cadres were waiting to start dinner. Shin, Choi, and Director Choe took their seats.
“You’re an extremely strong man to be able to work until late at night,” Shin told Kim Jong-Il, who, as always, was seated next to him.
“The doctors say I look ten years younger than I actually am,” the Dear Leader answered proudly.
The dinner lasted until midnight and was an extension of their production meeting, Jong-Il instructing all present to follow Shin and Choi’s instructions and to start presenting them with personnel and equipment the very next day for their review. After being driven home the couple went up to their bedroom, closed the door, walked to the bathroom, and turned on the taps. They were both febrile with anticipation as Choi took the tape recorder out of her bag, rewound it, and pressed play. They hadn’t had an opportunity to flip or replace the tape, so they’d only recorded forty-five minutes of Jong-Il’s production-meeting monologue, but the sound quality was good. They carefully hid the tape along with the pictures Kim Jong-Il had been sending Choi since her kidnapping, including the one of their first meeting at Nampo Harbor.
“I was too excited to sleep that night,” Shin recalled. They had managed to record the Dear Leader without getting caught, and their show of loyalty and obedience seemed to be convincing their captors. Most exciting of all, however, was one fact: “I could start making movies again.”
* * *
Shin and Choi got to work in the morning. Shin, eager to please the Kims and, he hoped, cause them to ease their watchfulness, was determined to have their first film ready to release on the Leader’s next birthday. That was on April 15, and it was already October 20. There was no time to waste.
The very notion of no time to waste, however, was different in North Korea than it had been in Seoul. “I later realized that the concept of time was quite different in North Korea,” Shin said. “They had no sense of urgency there.” He and Choi went through the head shots of every North Korean actor and actress on the books and, with ambitions to make forty films a year, requested a staff of 230: a relatively modest number compared to the two thousand staff with which the national Korea Film Company struggled to make ten films a year. Shin would later experience why the socialist system was so inefficient when Shin Film ended up swelling to seven hundred employees. In his words, “I had to enlarge the staff because of the inefficiencies endemic to the socialist system.… To get materials necessary for sets and so on, you couldn’t just pick up the phone and ask for them. You had to first formulate a plan a year in advance, listing your future requirements [so that] the state could set up its annual plan. If you needed wood or lumber, you would … put in a request a year ahead of time and the state would allocate the logs, [but] you had to have a person to estimate the requirements, a person to request allocation, another person to expedite the delivery, another one to deliver it, and so forth.” Shin ordered cameras, cranes, and editing machines, all to be shipped in from Germany, the finest equipment in the Eastern Bloc. For each of his productions he would also select his own actors, but without meeting them in person: he would be handed binders of head shots and choose on that basis (the collective filmmaking apparatus of North Korea kept no official credits or résumés). This system resulted in Shin, on at least one occasion, casting a lead actor far shorter than the rest of the cast, and having to manipulate camera angles to make him look taller.
The conference and dinner with Kim Jong-Il on October 19 was the last time they saw the Dear Leader for several months, but their new executive producer was as good as his word. Less than a week after their meeting, Choe Ik-Gyu met with Shin and Choi to give them their brand-new DPRK diplomatic passports. The next day the three of them, plus Choi’s ideological instructor and attendant Mr. Kang, drove to Sunan Airport, the small, single-terminal airport outside Pyongyang, and boarded a Russian-made Aeroflot airliner. They sat in first class—the DPRK may have claimed to be an egalitarian socialist paradise, but its national airline had three classes, like all others. In their carry-on bags Shin and Choi had $20,000 of spending money, given to them by Kim. The plane taxied over to the end of one of Sunan’s two runways, took off, and headed west.
They were traveling, via Moscow, to East Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia, filming location scenes for Emissary of No Return, their first North Korean picture. Emissary of No Return told the story of the Hague “secret emissary affair,” as it was known in Korea and Japan. At the 1907 Hague peace conference, a precursor to the Geneva Protocol meetings in 1925, three secret emissaries sent by the Korean emperor had tried to disrupt the talks held between the world powers, in an attempt to build international pressure on Japan, which was in the process of colonizing Korea. The foreign delegations, led by the United States and the United Kingdom, turned the emissaries away on the basis that Korea was no longer a sovereign nation and that Japan had already assumed responsibility for its international relations. Their rejection was quick and quiet. In Korea, however, the event had taken on mythical proportions, and Shin’s film followed the official North Korean history, in which one of the emissaries forced his way into the hall, delivered an impassioned speech for independence and the right to self-determination, and then, unable to sway the imperialist powers, committed hara-kiri (ritual suicide) on the convention floor, shocking one and all with his devotion.
Shin had chosen the subject matter after a discussion with Kim Jong-Il. Like many of the younger Kim’s movies, Emissary of No Return was based on a play Kim Il-Sung had allegedly written as a young guerrilla. Shin had thought it safest, for his first film, not to veer too far into new territory, and he was the one who had asked to adapt one of the Supreme Leader’s works. He had intentionally chosen a story set in The Hague in the hope that he would be allowed to film there, but Jong-Il had then clarified that when he said they could film “anywhere,” he’d meant anywhere this side of the Iron Curtain.
In East Berlin, where they spent three days, Shin and Choi scoured the city for suitable locations, shadowed every step of the way by their North Korean minders. These men were with Shin and Choi twenty-four hours a days, seven days a week. Kang would only give Shin and Choi their passports to walk through border control; at all other times the two booklets sat in his pocket, out of their reach.
Walking down one Berlin street, Shin spotted the American flag floating over a building behind heavily armed gates; it was the first time he had seen a U.S. embassy since Hong Kong in the summer of 1978. Choi, eyes locked on the flag, tugged on his sleeve and looked at him, hard, wanting to make a run for it. But Shin “had tasted the punishment that was meted out when [he] had tried to escape and failed,” he said, and he had no desire to put his wife through it. “What’s the matter with
you?” he hissed to Choi under his breath. “I will not make an attempt unless it’s one hundred percent certain. If they caught us, we’d be dead.” This time, they would plan properly, take no avoidable risks, and do it right.
* * *
In every city, Kang and Director Choe booked the rooms next door to Shin and Choi’s, often with connecting doors allowing them access. Kang ordered the South Koreans to call and notify him if they ever left the room, but he also kept a close eye on their room door in case they ignored the order. Any other phone calls, Kang insisted, must be made from his own room. The first evening they were in Prague, after dinner in the hotel restaurant, Shin asked Kang to use his phone and called an old friend, Japanese film critic Kyushiro Kusakabe, under the pretext of wanting to discuss starting a film festival in Pyongyang. Kusakabe was a close friend and Shin trusted him, but he and Choi had chosen him somewhat by default: Kang would have never authorized a call to South Korea, or to someone he suspected to be a personal, rather than professional, acquaintance. Kusakabe was the person who best fit the bill.
To appease his watchdogs’ suspicions Shin made the call from Kang’s room, acting relaxed and keeping the conversation about film, hoping his friend would be able to read between the lines. Kusakabe was stunned to hear Shin’s voice after all these years. He had thought, he said, that Shin was dead; that was what the South Korean media had been reporting. Kusakabe also suggested that he meet Shin in Budapest, if Shin could somehow get there. Shin responded that he would try, as cheerfully as possible, so that Kang and Choe “would not suspect anything.”
A few days later, filming began on Emissary of No Return at the Barrandov Studios lot, in Prague, Czechoslovakia. Barrandov was Roman Polanski’s favorite studio; Miloš Forman’s Amadeus would film on the same soundstages the following year. The complex had nine fully serviced stages and a 160,000-square-meter outdoor lot in the hills outside Prague, as well as top technical crews. One of the cavernous soundstages was being turned by Shin’s crews into a replica of the Ridderzaal, or Hall of Knights of The Hague, in the Netherlands.
Shin leaned into the Arriflex camera and, one hand gently steadying the tripod, pressed his right eye against the viewfinder. A wide-angle lens was fixed on the front of the camera body, capturing the actors in full body shots, everything in sharp focus. With his thumb he nudged the tripod’s panhandle, adjusting the frame slightly. Two North Korean assistants crouched by the camera, following his gaze, expectantly hanging on his every instruction.
Satisfied with the shot, he stepped back and looked around, mopping the sweat off his brow. The room was large but crowded. The set, including movable walls and fake ceilings, made the soundstage feel considerably smaller, and there were people everywhere: actors, crew members, assistants. Czech technicians and production designers spoke to Shin and the other Koreans through interpreters, broken English the language of choice since the Koreans understood no Czech and the Czechs no Korean. For every two people talking and pointing, there were another half-dozen standing behind them, frantically flipping through scripts and shot lists covered in notes in different alphabets, trying to keep up. The bright set lights baked the room in steaming heat.
One hand on his hip and the other clutching his stapled script, Shin did his best, too, to keep up with the conversation between his assistant and the head of the Czech crew. He’d put on weight in the ten months since his release from prison. The Richard Burton hairstyle was back, his black hair splashed over his temples. A silk Hermès scarf was tucked into the collar of his dark shirt and a director’s viewfinder, like a short telescope allowing him to visualize what a scene might look like in different focal lengths and aspect ratios, hung on a lanyard around his neck. His shirtsleeves were rolled up, revealing the gold Rolex, a gift from Kim Jong-Il, sitting snugly on his left wrist. Choi Eun-Hee stood nearby, in a newsboy cap and large sunglasses, her pen hovering over her own copy of the script. There was no role in this film for her, so she was acting as Shin’s second-in-command and codirector, focusing on the actors and their performances.
Although they were still in captivity, this, Shin later wrote, “was a historic thing for me.” He was so excited, he had taken the camera away from its operator and shot as many of the day’s scenes as possible himself. He was directing a motion picture, which he had felt convinced for several years would never happen again. Making films had been his calling, his passion, his life, and it had been taken away from him.
In November 1983 in Prague, Kim Jong-Il gave it back.
25
Like a European Movie
Making films over the next three years, Shin and Choi fell back in love—if they had ever truly fallen out of it.
In an environment where separately they had nothing, each found that the other person became their everything. They depended on each other for their sanity and focus, and they were each other’s last remaining link with their former lives. But there was more to it than mere circumstantial need. Prison had changed Shin and given him perspective. He realized, perhaps for the first time in his life, that he was not the most important person in the world. As his new situation cut Shin’s ego down to size, he grew less rebellious, headstrong, and selfish; and as time passed Choi felt a newfound devotion to a man who represented her ideal of commitment, talent, humor, and strength. After five years missing and fearing for each other every single day, and then being thrown together in a situation where they were both bereft of anything else, Shin and Choi’s love was rekindled with a new depth.
One person who was much less keen on Shin Sang-Ok than his ex-wife was Choe Ik-Gyu. The forty-nine-year-old was a director in his own right; he had run the North Korean film studios and proven his worth by overseeing Kim Jong-Il’s two biggest films, only to now find himself demoted to babysitting a pampered capitalist from the South. On set Choe often questioned Shin’s decisions, for instance telling him, loud enough for the crew to hear, “This other angle is better than the one you’re choosing. Why are you shooting from this angle?” He scoffed and sniggered when Shin walked around the set with his viewfinder to test various shots.
One evening, after the day’s filming on the streets of Prague had wrapped, the Koreans were sitting at dinner when Director Choe, slightly tipsy from the compulsory toasts to Kim Jong-Il and Kim Il-Sung, “stood up and started walking back and forth in front of the dining table,” Shin remembered. Choe held his hands up in front of his face, thumbs touching and palms open outward, as if framing a shot. In this position he hopped from one side of the table to the other, crouching down and spinning around. Shin realized Choe was mocking him. “Why are you always moving around here and there?” the North Korean sneered. “With all those foreigners out there watching you are making us lose face, walking back and forth like that, forever changing camera positions.”
“I was trying to avoid getting all the modern buildings and automobiles in the picture,” Shin shot back. “The film is set in 1907. I had to move around to find the right angle.” Besides, he added, North Korean film might have often used only one shot for an entire scene, but in the rest of the world, films were made more dynamic by cutting from one angle or shot size to another.
Shin’s answer frustrated the North Korean. “Oh, come on!” the North Korean barked. “Just do as I tell you!”
Shin had been waiting for an opportunity to test a theory of his, and this was his chance. Matching Choe’s volume, he slammed his fist on the table and sprang to his feet. “Fine, then: from this moment on I give up responsibility for this film! You take charge. And I’ll report what just happened to the Dear Leader Comrade Kim Jong-Il.” He and Choe stared each other off. After a few moments Mr. Kang, who had been quietly sitting at the table with a bitter expression on his face, most likely hoping the situation would just blow over, cleared his throat and said to Choe, his voice filled with exasperation: “Comrade Deputy Director, you have gone too far. What’s the matter with you? Control yourself!”
Choe looked fr
om Shin to Kang and back again. It seemed he might say something, but then suddenly he looked deflated. Putting his hands down, he walked back to his seat. “I made a mistake,” he mumbled, sitting down.
Shin was satisfied. In a moment of tension he had pulled rank and called upon Kim Jong-Il’s name, and their watchdog had backed off. Choi Eun-Hee had noticed it, too. She and Shin both filed the prerogative away.
* * *
Shin and Choi finished up in Prague and returned to Pyongyang, where they were to film the movie’s Korean scenes and begin editing as quickly as possible, Shin still set on April 15 of the following year as his premiere date. Within days of their return, Kim Jong-Il invited them to his office and showered them anew with luxury gifts: two brand-new, dusty brown Mercedes-Benz 280 sedans, the most expensive Mercedes cars in the world, flown in straight from the assembly line in Stuttgart. The license plates on both cars started with the number 2-16, for Jong-Il’s birthday, February 16.
Kim Jong-Il thanked Shin and Choi for their “hard work” while abroad, as well as for their cooperation in spending time in Eastern Europe to “lessen complaints and criticism and give people the impression you are working freely and doing as you please.” Whatever the watchdogs had reported back had pleased him, and he was already enthusing about the possibility of opening a Shin Film studio in Eastern Europe—in Yugoslavia, maybe, or Hungary. “In the future, if we want to expand,” Jong-Il told Shin, “you will need a base of operations.” He ordered Shin to travel back to Eastern Europe and scout a suitable location for the venture.
Armed with this vision, Shin and Choi planned their next trip west, this time to Budapest, where they intended to meet Kusakabe. They stopped in Prague on the way to hold talks at Barrandov about working there again in the future and in Yugoslavia to inspect sites for the planned Shin Film studio, before proceeding to Hungary. Shin found Budapest beautiful, and he couldn’t help notice that the Hungarians seemed happier, better off, and better fed than people living in the other non-free-market countries he had seen.