by Paul Fischer
“‘Comrade Kim Goes Flying’ Is a North Korean Rarity.” Los Angeles Times, October 6, 2012.
Nordine, Michael. “Godzilla and Flowers: The Films of Kim Jong-Il.” The Village Voice, January 9, 2013.
Sohn, Kwang-Ju. “Focus Analysis: Kim Jong-Il.” DailyNK, May 11, 2013.
Richardson, Nigel. “North Korea: Inside the Most Amusing Destination on Earth.” The Daily Telegraph, May 28, 2013, www.dailynk.com/english/keys/2003/12/04.php.
Johnson, Adam. “Dear Leader Dreams of Sushi.” GQ, June 2013.
MISCELLANEOUS
(By date of publication)
Amnesty International. “Ali Lameda: A Personal Account of the Experience of a Prisoner of Conscience in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.” February 1979.
Paquet, Darcy. “The Golden Age of Korean Cinema: Seven Directors.” Date unknown.
———. “Korean Directors in the 1970s.” Date unknown.
———. “Shin Sang-Ok in the 1950s.” Date unknown.
“Table Talk: Hwang Jang-Yop and Shin Sang-Ok Talk About the Two Homelands They Have Experienced.” Wolgan Chosun, March 1999, pp. 609–641.
Park JaeYoon. “Seeing Stars: Female Film Stars and Female Audiences in Post-Colonial Korea.” University of Kansas dissertation, May 2008.
Morrell, David. “Rambo and Me: The Story Behind the Story.” 2008.
National Human Rights Commission of Korea. “Survey Report on Political Prisoners’ Camps in North Korea.” Report, 2009.
Kan, Paul Rexton, Bruce E. Bechtol Jr., and Robert M. Collins. “Criminal Sovereignty: Understanding North Korea’s Illicit International Activities.” Repor, Strategic Studies Institute, March 2010.
Lee Sangjoon. “The Transnational Asian Studio System: Cinema, Nation-State, and Globalization in Cold War Asia.” New York University dissertation, May 2011.
Amnesty International. “North Korea: Political Prison Camps.” Special report, 2011.
Committee for Human Rights in North Korea. “Taken! North Korea’s Criminal Abduction of Citizens of Other Countries.” Special report, 2011.
Shim Ae-Gyung and Brian Yecies. “Power of the Korean Film Producer: Dictator Park Chung-Hee’s Forgotten Film Cartel of the 1960s Golden Decade and Its Legacy.” Thesis, University of Wollongong, 2012.
Committee for Human Rights in North Korea. “Coercion, Control, Surveillance, and Punishment: An Examination of the North Korea Police State.” Special report, 2013.
AUDIOVISUAL MATERIALS
Finn, Jim. Great Man and Cinema. 2009, www.fandor.com/films/great_man_and_cinema.
Smith, Shane. North Korean Film Madness. Vice magazine, 2011, www.vice.com/the-vice-guide-to-film/north-korean-film-madness-1.
Kim Jong-Il’s Cinema Experience, www.northkoreancinema.com.
Korean Central News Agency (Pyongyang). Kim Jong-Il As Film and Opera Director, www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdjj8JQMQY8.
Korean Central News Agency (Pyongyang). The Brilliant History of Great Leadership, www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRC86RAvbdc.
Korean Central News Agency (Pyongyang). Leader Kim Jong-Il in the Time of Creation of Five Revolutionary Operas, www.youtube.com/watch?v=--MhqE1N_Wo.
Korean Central News Agency (Pyongyang). Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il Made Korea into a Paradise, www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ji3tqZUynY).
The jury for the 1994 Cannes Film Festival. Shin sits second from left in the front row with Catherine Deneuve (center). Jury president Clint Eastwood is in the back row, second from right. (Courtesy of Choi Eun-Hee)
Shin and Choi at a Pyongyang monument after being reunited in 1983. Choe Ik-Gyu stands watch in the background. (Courtesy of Choi Eun-Hee)
Choi Eun-Hee stars in Salt, the fourth film she and Shin made in North Korea. Choi won the Best Actress award at the Moscow Film Festival for her performance as a struggling mother during the Japanese occupation. (Courtesy of Choi Eun-Hee)
Shin filming a scene from Salt in the North Korean countryside. His work ethic and physical endurance became legendary among North Korean crews. (Courtesy of Choi Eun-Hee)
Shin Sang-Ok sets up a shot during the filming of Emissary of No Return in 1984 at Barrandov Studios in Prague, Czech Republic. (Courtesy of Choi Eun-Hee)
The poster for The Flower Girl (1972), North Korea’s single most iconic movie and the defining motion picture of Kim Jong-Il’s film career. He produced and oversaw the writing of the film, which became a hit throughout communist Asia. (Korea Film Export & Import Corporation)
Official state portrait of Kim Il-Sung, the Sun of Korea, first Supreme Leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. (Author’s photo)
Official state portrait of Kim Jong-Il, the Dear Leader and Beloved General, second ruler of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. (Author’s photo)
Kim Jong-Il’s official state biography begins with a messianic birth on the snowy slopes of Mount Paekdu, considered by traditional Koreans as the source of their people’s ancestral origins. In this “historical” Party portrait the child Kim Jong-Il is shown sitting on his mother’s shoulder and holding his father’s hand. The cabin of his birth can be seen in the background, and all three wear the revolutionary uniforms of the Korean Liberation Army. (Author’s photo)
Kim Jong-Il’s state funeral, on December 28, 2011, stunned the world with its televised images of the thousands of hysterical, sobbing North Koreans lining the procession route in subzero temperatures. Military vehicles and goose-stepping soldiers escorted the Dear Leader’s body to its final resting place in the luxurious Kumsusan Memorial Palace. (AFP/Getty Images)
Kim Jong-Il welcomes Choi Eun-Hee to North Korea at Nampo harbor, January 1978, in a photograph taken by a press officer he brought with him to the dockside to record the moment. (Courtesy of Choi Eun-Hee)
Choi Eun-Hee accepting the Best Actress award for Salt at the Moscow Film Festival, July 1985. (Courtesy of Choi Eun-Hee)
Shin and Choi’s official Party portrait, taken at Kim Jong-Il’s offices on October 19, 1983. Earlier that evening the couple had secretly tape-recorded their first production meeting with Kim. (Courtesy of Choi Eun-Hee)
Shin’s most famous North Korean film, Pulgasari, was a monster flick inspired by Godzilla. Years after it was made it became a cult classic on the U.S. home video and midnight-movie screening circuit. (Twin Co.)
Choi Eun-Hee, Kim Jong-Il, and Shin Sang-Ok at the party thrown by Kim to reunite the South Korean couple in March 1983. Shin had been released from brutal Prison Number Six only two weeks earlier, and the evening was the first time Shin and Choi had seen each other in more than five years. (Courtesy of Choi Eun-Hee)
Shin and Choi on Shin’s thirty-fourth birthday in 1960, during the happiest years of their first marriage. Choi is in period costume, Shin in the suit-and-skinny-tie uniform he wore as a young director, and the moment was the extent of their celebrations, a few minutes stolen on set. “We were always so busy,” Choi said. (Courtesy of Choi Eun-Hee)
About the Author
Paul Fischer is a film producer who studied social sciences at the Institut d’Études Politiques in Paris and film at the University of Southern California and the New York Film Academy. His first feature film, the documentary Radioman, won the Grand Jury Prize at the Doc NYC film festival and was released to critical and commercial acclaim. A Kim Jong-Il Production is his first book.
Follow Paul on Twitter @tencents77.
A KIM JONG-IL PRODUCTION. Copyright © 2015 by Paul Fischer. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address Flatiron Books, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.flatironbooks.com
Cover design by Graham Humphreys
eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to [email protected].
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-05428-9 (e-book)
First Edition: February 2015