‘Lovers’ tells real-life drama of kidnapped South Korean film couple
MOVIES
“The Lovers & the Despot” tells a story that, if it were not true, would be regarded as some stoned screenwriter’s delirium.
In the 1970s, future North Korean dictator Kim Jongil, a film fan, wanted to improve his Communist country’s dreary cinema.
So he arranged to kidnap South Korean movie star Choi Eun-hee while she was in Hong Kong. He then abducted her ex-husband, formidable South Korean director Shin Sang-ok, and imprisoned him for five years.
When the two captives finally met, Kim revealed his plan for them to collaborate on movies that would secure North Korea prestige on the international film scene.
After 17 films and personal appearances in the Moscow and Berlin film festivals, they ingratiated themselves enough to be able to go to Vienna in 1983, ostensibly to sign “contracts” on a new movie.
Instead, they dodged their minders and fled to the American Embassy, where they were given asylum.
For English co-directors Ross Adam and Rob Cannan, this seven-year effort began with two years’ negotiations with Choi, who was finally interviewed on camera in 2011.
Their sources expanded to include an ex-CIA agent, a former court poet who escaped from North Korea and a Hong Kong detective who answered a newspaper ad.
Today Choi, 86, is “sadly very elderly and unwell. Shin died in 2006,” said Cannan, on a London phone interview with Adam.
Choi, he said, “was full of mysteries. Considering what happened to her, we expected her to be a pretty harsh critic of Kim Jong-il.
“But she actually had a few kind things to say about him, and I think that endeared her more to us. Because you’d expect someone to be critical and she was somewhat guileless in that way; she couldn’t help herself.
“She refused to criticize him — maybe it’s a Stockholm syndrome thing. But also, compared to most people in North Korea, they had a pretty good life.
“She wasn’t happy — it was five years without any contact from people at home. She was depressed. She missed her (two) children — that’s why she wanted to escape.
“When she recalled her kidnap story — being injected and thrown on a boat — she’d say it laughing sometimes. It’s that she sees her life as this colorful melodrama.”