by Paul Fischer
Hungary was intriguing for another reason: Hungarian immigration law allowed people holding diplomatic passports—people like Shin and Choi—to enter neighboring Austria without a visa. Austria was on the other side of the Iron Curtain, and its capital, Vienna, had become the crossroads between East and West, a hotbed of spies, defectors, and visa seekers of all kinds. Shin had never set foot in Austria, but he imagined the city as pictured in the classic film The Third Man, full of refugees desperate to get out. He wasn’t far off. Maybe, he started dreaming, if he and Choi could find a way to get there, they too could find a way to get out …
* * *
On the morning of December 10, 1983, Shin and Choi sat in their hotel room in the Budapest Hilton, anxiously waiting. Every now and then Director Choe called on the phone from next door to make sure they had not slipped out. Finally there was a knock at the door. Shin sprang up to open the door, and Kusakabe quickly slipped in.
A few days earlier, while working on reshoots at Barrandov, Shin had managed to elude Choe and Kang for a second, find a phone, and arrange the meeting with his Japanese friend. Kusakabe could not help them escape, but he was a lifeline, a link to the outside world. Shin and Choi led Kusakabe to a far corner of the room, away from the wall adjoining Choe’s room, and told their old friend everything about their kidnapping and their current work—but not about their plan to escape. “I was uncertain about our situation,” Shin later said. Even with such a “very faithful friend” as Kusakabe, the filmmaker was wary. He didn’t know whom he could trust. They gave Kusakabe their prized tape recording of the Dear Leader, as well as the photograph of Choi’s first meeting with Jong-Il and letters they asked Kusakabe to secretly deliver to their family in Seoul. The tape and photo, they warned Kusakabe, were to be kept a secret for now. “This is absolutely a secret between you and me and Eun-Hee only,” Shin said. “Please keep them for six months—but if you don’t hear from us again after that time, give everything to the Japanese and Korean news media.” If tragedy befell him and Choi, Shin felt, he wouldn’t need the insurance the tape provided—but he still wanted the world to know what had happened to them.
They hugged Kusakabe good-bye. He walked to the door, made sure the hallway was clear, and slipped out. Shin and Choi worked in Eastern Europe for another week, shooting with their five main actors, who had been sent from Pyongyang and were surveilled as closely as they were. There was a brief delay in the filming when it transpired that the actors, who had never traveled outside of Pyongyang, had flown with no suitcases, the concept of luggage being utterly foreign to them; but by December 16 filming was wrapped and the entire cast and crew flew back to snow-covered North Korea. Sitting in their villa, guarded by their attendants, Shin and Choi filled the last days of 1983 writing, out of habit, their sycophantic New Year’s greetings to the Kims.
* * *
As Shin and Choi worked on their film throughout January and February, they continued having meetings with Jong-Il, who was growing ever more eager to expand filmmaking operations. “He was very concerned about improving North Korea’s image in Southeast Asia,” Shin later wrote. The Rangoon bombing three months before had backfired and badly damaged the country’s standing internationally, and “Kim Jong-Il wanted desperately to redeem the image of North Korea.” Film and culture, he hoped, would be one way to do so. Shin and Choi had once again expressed to Kim their concerns about the well-being of their children back in Seoul, and the Dear Leader had agreed to let Shin and Choi communicate with their family via the Chosen Soren, the organization for ethnic Koreans living in Japan, which, since the division of Korea, had functioned as North Korea’s unofficial agent in Japan. In January Shin and Choi received from the Chosen Soren letters and a package from Shin’s niece, who promised to write more. Their friend Fumiko Inoue wrote to them telling them their daughter, Myung-Im, had married, and that their son, Jung-Kyun, was living with Choi’s family. Oh Su-Mi had married a photographer named Kim. A few weeks later, again through the North Korean mission in Japan, Shin was able to correspond with a family friend in New Jersey in the United States to ask him whether he would legally adopt Jung-Kyun. His friend, a man his age by the name of Kim In-Sook, “was stunned to hear my voice. He thought I had been killed.”
Shin didn’t want his son in Pyongyang, but he didn’t want him in South Korea, either. He didn’t trust his own government—and he had heard of the stigma associated with having defectors, as the world would brand him and Choi the second their first film was released, as family members. No, Jung-Kyun was better off abroad.
In the meantime Shin and Choi managed to complete their movie on March 13, over a month ahead of their self-imposed deadline. Shin informed Kim Jong-Il, who was so delighted he announced a special preview to be held three days later at Party headquarters.
The screening was a “historic” event in North Korean cinema, Shin said. When the lights dimmed in the Party Central Committee building’s screening room that evening, the party cadres, including those who until recently had run Kim’s studio, were treated to a film unlike anything they had ever seen before. Light faded up on the screen to reveal the streets of The Hague, selected from documentary stock footage, which soon cut to shots taken at Barrandov studios and on the streets of Prague, standing in for the Dutch city. It was the first foreign footage ever used in a North Korean film, and the scenes were full of European characters played by actual Western actors. They were dubbed into Korean—Jong-Il had drawn the line at actual foreign languages being spoken—but the impression was still astonishing. At the end of the movie, instead of immediately fading to black, the action transitioned to a credit roll, the first time a North Korean film had individually credited the cast and crew. The most prominent credit read, in big bold letters: “Director Choi Eun-Hee, under the general direction of Shin Sang-Ok.”
When the lights came up, Jong-Il was ecstatic. “It’s fantastic!” he enthused. “It’s just like a European movie!” The rest of the audience, none of whom had ever seen a European movie, loudly agreed. Jong-Il stood up and congratulated Shin and Choi, to applause from the crowd. As the guests filed out of the screening room and headed upstairs for dinner, Kim took Shin’s arm. The Dear Leader was beaming. His dream of establishing a world-class film industry seemed to be within his grasp.
“When this movie comes out,” he told Shin, “there are going to be a lot of jealous people.”
26
The Press Conference
“I was so astonished by the video that my heart was pounding and I could hardly watch,” Shin later recalled. Mr. Kang stood in the living room of the Pyongyang villa, angrily pressing the volume button on the Japanese-made television. The screen in front of Shin was showing photographs of himself and Choi in North Korea, the very photographs they had given Kusakabe five months before. “… and her ex-husband, the director Shin Sang-Ok,” the newscaster was saying, “both missing from Hong Kong since 1978, were kidnapped by the North…” The camera panned over images of Shin and Choi’s letters to their children, of the hard copies of the photographs, and even of the cassette tape containing their recording of Kim Jong-Il. Shin recognized his own handwriting on the orange label and the decoy case, originally for a record of pop songs, that they had hidden the tape in. Shin felt his heart drop into his stomach. “… supported by sound tapes and letters the couple sent clandestinely to relatives in Seoul,” the news anchor droned on. “It is reported that under North Korean coercion Shin and Choi are making a movie to be presented to Kim Il-Sung as a birthday gift. The film slanders the Republic of Korea and several top officials…”
Shin looked at Kang, who was fuming. He was terrified. His last two attempts to dupe his kidnapper had ended with him being thrown in prison and tortured. Surely Jong-Il would have no mercy now.
* * *
After the triumphant preview of Emissary of No Return for Kim Jong-Il, Shin and Choi had braced themselves for the world’s inevitable shock when, five years after disappearin
g from the face of the Earth, they both resurfaced, together, working for one of the world’s most notorious dictators, and with a new film, made for him, to promote.
Their return to filmmaking was exhilarating, and having work to focus on had made the last several months fly by. But Shin and Choi were still obsessed with escaping from captivity and returning home. The only way to do so, they knew, was if they were allowed close enough to the Iron Curtain that they could skip over to the West. There were only two places where that was realistically possible: Berlin or Vienna. The paradox confronting the couple was that their only chance of escape lay in convincing their jailer, Kim Jong-Il, that they wanted to stay in North Korea. But Kim Jong-Il, it seemed, would only be convinced if they managed to convince the rest of the world first. If they wanted the freedom of movement to travel to either of those cities, Shin and Choi would have to start singing the praises of the North Korean regime to the Western world.
Jong-Il had arranged a second preview of Emissary of No Return, this one for his father on the Supreme Leader’s birthday, to be attended by four of the European cast and crew, whom Jong-Il promised to fly to Pyongyang; he would also throw a special Friday night party in their honor. Eager to impress Kim Il-Sung, Shin asked Jong-Il for permission to travel to Leningrad to capture a handful of additional shots that would enhance the film’s production values even further. Jong-Il agreed, and in late March Shin and Choi spent three closely supervised days in Russia with a skeleton crew, filming in Leningrad’s baroque quarter and at the old Korean legation in the city center. The days were short, the sun rising after nine and setting long before five, and relentlessly wet and cold, temperatures dropping to minus ten degrees Celsius. Indoors, following Russian tradition, rooms were kept extremely warm, and Choi, who was unprepared to constantly go from one climate to the other, fell ill. Their flights to Pyongyang were booked for March 29, and Choe Ik-Gyu refused to change the schedule. So he, Shin, and Kang returned to North Korea, leaving Choi Eun-Hee with the other minders to wait in Russia until she was healthy enough to fly.
Back in Pyongyang, Shin spent several uneasy days worried about his wife. He filled the time cutting the new scenes into the existing version of Emissary of No Return and watching films in Jong-Il’s film library. On April 2, with the screening day drawing near, Shin returned to the villa late in the evening and found the maid waiting at the door for him, flushed and anxious. Kim Jong-Il had called several times while Shin was out, she said, and had ordered them to put him on the phone, but no one could find him. Shin must stay in for the rest of the evening, she said: the Dear Leader would be calling again.
Shortly after that, the hotline phone rang. Shin nervously picked it up.
“The South Korean Agency for National Security has issued a communiqué. They are saying you were kidnapped.” Jong-Il’s voice was tense on the other end of the line. “I’m sending Kang to brief you. Call me right after.”
* * *
The news report was accurate and exhaustive, and led the news on both KBS and NBC, South Korea’s two biggest television channels. It named not just Shin and Choi but Kusakabe, Fumiko Inoue, and Kim In-Sook. Kusakabe, it seemed, had gotten cold feet as the six-month deadline Shin had set grew near, so he had gone to the authorities early. The South Korean government’s report of the evidence was lengthy and divided into chapters, with titles like “The Abduction of Choi Eun-Hee,” “The Abduction of Shin Sang-Ok,” and “The North’s Operations Using Shin Sang-Ok and Choi Eun-Hee Against the South.” Within hours the story was picked up by the international newswires and caused a sensation, not just in Asia but everywhere. It was 10 p.m. in Pyongyang, 9 a.m. on America’s East Coast. Commuters in New York, Boston, and Washington, D.C., were able to read about it in that same day’s evening newspapers. BIZARRE KIDNAPPING CASE REPORTED, bellowed one headline; ACTRESS, HUSBAND SEIZED BY NORTH KOREANS, declared another. Among Korean communities, in South Korea and abroad, the story sparked intense debate. Could it be believed? Was it a publicity stunt to jump-start the stalled engine of Shin’s failing career? Or was the news being manipulated by the South Korean government to slander the Kims?
For Shin, the day’s events were likely to have immediate, possibly extremely unpleasant, consequences. As soon as Kang stopped the VHS tape, Shin walked over to the hotline telephone and called Kim Jong-Il. He knew Jong-Il was a night owl and was expecting his call, but part of him still hoped the Dear Leader had gone home for the night. On the other hand, Shin would have to face the music sooner or later, and if so, he’d rather get it over with now and be done with it. He would apologize wretchedly and hope for the best.
Jong-Il picked up almost immediately. “You need to deal with this,” he said before Shin could speak up. “I think maybe your elder brother reported this to the NSP [National Security Planning, South Korea’s intelligence service]. We need to deal with it.”
Shin, who was sure Jong-Il must have known he had betrayed him, was stunned. He didn’t know yet that Kim Jong-Il recorded every one of his own meetings himself, including the same one he and Choi had secretly taped, so that his every instruction could be transcribed and put into immediate practice, even if he’d forgotten he had said it in the first place. Neither did he know that Jong-Il was suspicious of the Chosen Soren, whose first loyalty was sometimes to its members rather than to him. Clearly Kim suspected that the Chosen Soren, who handled Shin’s approved communications with his brother back in Seoul, had either been infiltrated by the South Koreans or had itself leaked the letters and, somehow, the tape recording.
That could have been it—or, Shin speculated later, maybe Kim knew what was going on, but punishing the South Korean couple would mean publicly admitting he had failed to convert them. So perhaps he was ignoring the truth.
In any case, Jong-Il, a man famous for his explosive temper, sounded fidgety but otherwise calm. “What do you intend to do?” Shin asked. Jong-Il’s focus was already on countering the South Korean claims, and the only way to do so was to try and disprove them. “You and Madame Choi had better pretend to be working in Eastern Europe, not in Pyongyang,” Kim said. “She is still in Moscow?”
“Yes,” Shin said, “she’s in Moscow. She has a cold.”
“Okay. That’s good. An NHK correspondent is in Pyongyang now.” The NHK was the public Japanese Broadcasting Corporation, Japan’s equivalent of the BBC. “I will ask him to call Madame Choi and arrange for her to make the correspondent believe that you are both right now working in Eastern Europe.”
“I see,” Shin answered. “I’ll telephone her and tell her the cover story.”
“Yes, that’ll be good. As for you, you must immediately go to Budapest or Belgrade and hold a press conference to explain that you were not kidnapped, but voluntarily came to Eastern Europe to work there. Take the videotape and show it to Madame Choi later.”
“I will do as you instruct,” Shin said.
“Good.”
The line clicked off. As Shin put the receiver down he exhaled deeply. A moment he had desperately hoped to avoid was now upon him.
It was time for him and Choi to lie to the world. And to lie convincingly. Their lives depended on it.
* * *
Shin flew to Belgrade the next morning and booked a press conference in the conference room of the Intercontinental Hotel, where he was staying. Three days later, twenty or so reporters turned up at the set time, neither a great crowd nor an empty room. Most of them were from the Communist bloc, but there were also representatives of Reuters and the Associated Press.
When the journalists arrived at the hotel, so did the Yugoslavian police.
There was confusion as the policemen blocked entry to the conference hall and, through interpreters, explained to Shin and the North Koreans that as far as they were concerned, the event was an announcement of propaganda, not news, and that as such it was an unapproved public political gathering and could not be held out in the open. If the Koreans wanted the interview to go ahead, th
ey would have to continue in the privacy of their room. After discussing the situation with Mr. Kang, Shin went to the front desk and upgraded his room to a suite, so that it would be big enough to fit everyone, then headed back into the lobby to tell the waiting journalists about the change of plans. For many of them the novelty of the occasion had already worn off, so that when Shin got into the elevator to go to the new room, only five reporters followed—one of whom was the North Korean Central News Agency correspondent. The rest had gone home.
Upstairs Shin opened the gathering with prepared remarks. “My wife and I were absolutely not kidnapped,” he said. “We voluntarily fled from South Korea to Europe.” In the back of the room, as he remembered, the Associated Press man “listened to a few of our remarks, then snickered as if it were all a big joke, and left.”
After suffering censorship and rough handling by Park Chung-Hee’s government, Shin told the remaining journalists, his production company had been shut down and he and Choi had temporarily gone to stay in West Germany, where, he now claimed, one of Kim Jong-Il’s envoys had approached them with a proposal of funding from the Dear Leader. “Kim Jong-Il offered to sponsor us without political oppression,” Shin said, “to make movies for the purpose of national reunification.” Shin had accepted and opened an office in Budapest. “We are now working in Eastern Europe.”
“Why have you been silent for so long?” one of the reporters asked.
“We had to hide in West Germany because of intimidation from the South,” Shin mumbled.
“Choi Eun-Hee disappeared before you, and you declared publicly you thought she was kidnapped. Where was she before you disappeared?”