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Speaker 1: Well tonight We're going to be talking about is the

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story of North Korea's stolen filmmaker. The story of Shin

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song oke and Choi Unhi one of the strangest spy

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tales of the twentieth century. North Korea orchestrated the abduction

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of a celebrated South Korean film couple to jumpstart its

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propaganda machine. The targets were Shin sang ok, one of

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South Korea's most famous directors, and his former wife Choi unh.

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In nineteen seventy eight, Choi was lured to Hong Kong

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under the guise of a business meeting. There, she was drugged, kidnapped,

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and taken a pong. Months later, Shin, while searching for

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his missing ex wife, was also abducted. The mastermind behind

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the plot was Kim Jong Ayle, who at the time

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was overseeing North Korea's film industry and was frustrated by

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his poor quality. Convinced that better films could shape the

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regime's international image, he forced the pair to make movies

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for him. Over the next several years, Shin and Choi

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worked under surveillance, but were treated with relative privilege compared

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to ordinary North Koreans. They were even remarried to Kim's assistance.

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Between nineteen eighty three and nineteen eighty six, they directed

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and produced a series of films, including Pool Gasati, a

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monster movie reminiscent of Godzilla. Kim reportedly attended screenings with

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them and gave detailed notes, aspiring to be a film

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producer himself. Despite outward appearances of loyalty, Shin and Choyd

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secretly plotted their escape in nineteen eighty six. While in

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Vienna for a film festival, they slipped away from their

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guards and sought asylum went to the US embassy. Their

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dramatic defection exposed North Korea's bizarre kidnapping scheme. The episode

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revealed the extent of Kim Jong eel's obsession with cinema

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and demonstrated how far an authoritarian regime would go to

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harness culture as a weapon.