#340: A-List Movie Star KIDNAPPED By North Korea- then Forced To Make Movies For Kim Jung Il
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Get your quote today at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. The mansion was heavily guarded. First, there's a layer of thick pine trees making it feel incredibly secluded, incredibly private, just tucked away.

Then there's a layer of concrete gates, walls, barbed-wired fences, and then armed guards surrounding the entire perimeter of this mansion. She's given a tour of this massive estate her first night there. These are the bedrooms, but you'll be staying here alone, minus the guards, so it's your pick which room you'd like. Now, this is the library and the theater.

There's a tacky chandelier hanging from every single ceiling. It felt like a mini Las Vegas in here. Over the top displays of wealth in every single room. Euni's very first night in that mansion. She was guided to a dining hall where the entire dining table, enough to fit 16 people, was filled with delicacies and expensive foods from all over the world. Fried shrimp, raw fish, beef ribs, lobster, all just for her.

Enough food to feed 100 people, but nobody's joining her for dinner. She would be alone. Euni couldn't stomach any of it. She took a few sips of soup, ran into her bedroom, slammed the door shut. She wanted to lock it, but none of the doors in this house lock.

She tried another door. It leads to a closet that's jam-packed with clothes. Clothing that was perfectly tailored to fit Euni's body. It wasn't just Euni wears a medium and all the clothes are medium. It was very much bespoke, tailored to fit her exact measurements. How? This is her first time here.

Euni cried herself to sleep that first night. The next morning, there were gifts waiting for her downstairs. Every cosmetic that she ever liked, every skincare product she used back home, makeup products that she uses at home, the same brand, the same item, the same shade, all there beautifully packaged up.

Every single day Euni was in that house, a new expensive gift would come. Gowns, fur coats, lacy hand-stitched lingerie, all custom-tailored to fit her and only her. Bespoke dresses, cosmetics, flowers. Dinner was always another giant spread of food that she can't stomach and enough for 20 people, but it's just her. Euni is miserable.

She was one of the most famous actresses in South Korea, and now she had been kidnapped and held captive in a mansion with no way to escape. She had guards watching her every single move, attendees tending to her every single need. Whatever she needed, anything at all, was at her disposal, at her request. The only condition is she can't leave.

She was trapped in captivity for about five days when her helper burst in through the door. You've been invited to a dinner party! Come on, we must hurry and get ready. She was dressed in a bespoke gown perfectly tailored to her, driven in a Mercedes. It pulls up in front of another massive opulent building. The door swings open. She gets out and standing in front of her is Kim Jung Il.

the soon-to-be Supreme Leader of North Korea. Welcome, Madam Choi. Have you been able to get some rest? She stood there, shocked. Wasn't he supposed to be dead or barely alive?

That's what South Korean news have been reporting. But he's here, standing in front of her, healthy as a horse, beaming. He's so proud of kidnapping her. Why would Kim Jong-il want to kidnap her? Why would the son of the supreme leader of North Korea-era parents kidnap a South Korean film actress when all foreign films are banned in North Korea? The great leader would tell her, because I want you to star in North Korean movies. And he smiled.

But it's not a request. It was a threat. Eun-hee, top South Korean actress, would have to act like her life depended on it for Kim Jong-il, the soon-to-be leader of North Korea.

We would like to thank today's sponsors who have made it possible for Rotten Mango to support Korea Future, whose mission is to document and analyze human rights violations and international crimes committed in North Korea in order to help support accountability and proceedings under national and international law in hopes to help provide justice for the victims. This episode's partnerships have also made it possible to support Rotten Mango's growing team of dedicated researchers and translators. We would also like to thank you guys for your continued support as we work on our mission to be worthy advocates of these causes.

This is actually a revisit to an episode I did a few years back, back when we were still doing just audio only and no visuals on this podcast. But when the episode of Kim Jong-nam being killed by two girls who thought it was a YouTube prank...

Yeah, when that went up, a lot of you guys have been requesting this case through our website. And we didn't want to just upload the audio with no video since I know a lot of you guys like the video format. So I went in, I took a second look at this case. I tried to approach it from a completely different perspective. I did my best to make it feel like a completely different episode. So even if you have listened to the previous audio only episodes, I am hoping and I think that this will still feel like an entirely new case.

We also did a lot of additional research. The novel, A Kim Jong Il Production, which that was my second time reading it. Paul Fisher is absolutely incredible. I mean, he is such a well thought out author. Like everything that he...

He put his heart and soul into that book, and you can tell because it's so hard to put down, and it probably has a spot on my list of top 10 books that I've ever read. I believe he just recently released a new book a year or two back, so I'm going to link both in the description. Give it a read. He's a fantastic author, and there is so much more detail in his work. But as always, with any episode, if there is anything lost in translation, miscommunicated, or additional information that you know, please let me know down in the comments.

Now with that being said, let's get into it. The headlines in South Korea read, Euni, famous South Korean movie star gone missing and her famous film director husband is suspect number one.

Did he do it? He would say, no, that's nonsense. Well, did he kill her? Did he hide her somewhere? Does he know a secret? Does she know a secret about him that could take his whole career down? Was it for the money or was it because he was just done with her? Did he think that this his life is his own little movie and he can just kidnap his ex-wife?

Director Shin thought it was all ridiculous. And anybody who believed such a ridiculous thing was just not very bright. But every time he tried to tell people, reporters, press, media, friends, family, nobody believed him. The police, they raided his house. They went through all of his personal belongings. Things are not looking in his favor. Reporters, police, they're hounding him with questions, all of which he keeps denying. I didn't do anything.

But is it not true that you cheated on your wife, the woman who helped you achieve your dreams?

Eun-hee was already a movie star when they got married. He was a relatively unknown director. She's the one that made his career. They got married. She starred in every single film of his, pushing him into just complete stardom, fame, and money, basically shoving wads of bills into his pockets. And then he turned around, found a younger actress to star in his movie. He cheated on his older wife with the younger actress. He had two kids with his mistress.

When he was the one that knew that one of Euni's biggest insecurities was the fact that she was unable to bear him biological children. He turned around, had an affair with a younger woman, had two biological kids.

Was it also not true that Director Shin didn't even tell her about this affair? He waited until she woke up one morning and read it on the papers. She was completely blindsided and humiliated so publicly. Is it not true that Eun-hee hit rock bottom because she felt her husband went and found the two things that Eun-hee could no longer provide, youth and biological children? Is that not true? Director Shin would say, but that has nothing to do with her disappearance.

And then to pour giant crystals of salt into the gaping open wound. Did director Shin not recreate a movie he first made with his wife Euni as the lead? Did he not redo it, recreate it with the newer, younger version of his mistress? So you're saying that she went missing and these people are coming to...

The ex-husband or husband? Ex-husband. Ex-husband. And he's like, I had nothing to do with it. But they're like, did you not cheat on her? Did you not have kids with your mistress? Did you not wait for her to find it on the news? I mean, it's so brutal. You sound like the prime suspect. I mean, what he did is absolutely horrendous. But director Shin was innocent. That's what he keeps claiming. He has nothing to do with his ex-wife's disappearance. But not a single person would believe him after hearing all of that.

So now, there's only one way to prove his innocence. Go find Eun-hee and bring her home.

The largest prison camp in North Korea is larger than the city of Los Angeles. You can be thrown in prison in North Korea for just about anything. One woman was thrown into prison because she was in charge of handing out food rations. A higher up in the government structure wanted more food from her than was allowed in his rations, surpassing his rations, breaking the law. She told him, no, that's breaking the law. She was thrown in prison. Had she given him extra food, she would probably be thrown in prison either way.

But in North Korea, your actions are not just your own actions. Usually three generations of a family are thrown in prison for one person's actions. In prison, you are condemned to hard labor and likely death. In prison, you're being watched nonstop. Nobody's to be trusted. Guards in North Korean prison camps are rewarded by how many escape attempts they stop. So they'll lie to prisoners. Hey, come here.

I can help you escape. I know you were wrongfully charged. I know a cousin who knows your cousin. I'm going to help you get out of here, okay? They'll help you. They'll wait until the very last second until that prisoner is about to reach the gates and then boom, they'll shoot them down from the guard post. They'll drag their dead body back to the prison to show their higher ups and get rewarded with extra food rations.

Sometimes, if an escapee doesn't get killed on their attempt but is still alive, the guards will have all the other prisoners come outside and order them to walk on them nonstop. Break all their bones, crush their organs, stomp on him. Either he dies or you all die.

Once the escapee was trampled on, completely crushed until he looked like a bag of ground meat, just limp and jello-y on the floor, the guards would just leave him out for a few days as a reminder to everyone, don't ever try to escape because we are watching you.

Other times, guards will hang up prisoners who try to escape and order the rest of the group to stone them alive. They'll have to throw heavy stones at them. The other prisoners stated the skin on the victims' faces would be completely gone. Nothing would be left of their clothes but just some like bloody strings. Force terminations are very common. They will inject poison into the fetus or if they're feeling lazy, guards will just cut a woman open, rip her baby out, and strangle the child if they're still alive.

Sometimes they might even make you wait. Whether you feel like you're getting away with it, but they rip your life apart when it hurts more, or for the sheer enjoyment of it, but it has been reported that forced terminations occur when prisoners were about seven to eight months pregnant, basically about to give birth.

So it would be, you would think, in everybody's best interest then if you are not pregnant upon arriving in prison and you do whatever it takes to not get pregnant once you are in that prison, to not go through all of that. But there's a catch. Female prisoners are often ordered to wash clothes at night where the guards would take them to be R-worded. Yeah.

So we can imagine that a lot of female prisoners die during the process, but most people in North Korean prisons die from starvation. The starvation there gets so bad that some prisoners are given less than three ounces of corn for an entire day, unseasoned, usually rotten, stale corn. You know when you order a Chipotle burrito bowl and you ask for corn salsa on your bowl? It's about a scoop of corn. That is how much they would get for their entire day to consume while they're doing hard labor.

It's so little that prisoners start obsessing over consuming anything they can get their hands on. And the only thing that they have are rats and cockroaches. If they're lucky, the guards take pity on them and shove a small cup of pig feed into the cell. It's like the crushed sand that they feed pigs that gets pushed into their cell and they will eat it up.

A former defector said, Another former prisoner said,

During the winters, it gets as cold as negative 10 degrees in North Korea, but you never get anything other than the thin shirt that you're wearing. So with the severe lack of nutrition, the harsh conditions, prisoners barely have the energy to live, but they need to work. They need to work 16 hours a day.

Depending on the prison, there are different types of forced labor. So the more physically taxing and dangerous ones include mining, logging, construction, farming. But also you could be sent to make fake eyelashes for like 20 hours in a single day. I mean, it sounds easier than mining, right? But they have quotas. They have to meet those quotas. And if you don't, you're going to get punished.

Side note, that's been a whole thing recently. There are a ton of products out there that are labeled made in China, but they could actually be made in North Korean prison camps. Fake lashes and wigs being two big examples of exports that you will see get exported into the United States to be sold to consumers that violate U.S. sanctions because they're made in North Korea and North Korea profits off of them. But we don't know, right? We don't know. Okay.

One survivor said there were about 160 women in her side of the prison camp. They would get lined up every night after 16, 20 hours of working. And the ones that the guards felt like didn't perform well enough, they would get whipped and their heads would be smashed into the concrete walls as punishment. They would just walk up behind you and start smashing heads into the walls. Then they get divided into groups of 50. They're forced to sleep in the same cell. I mean, at most, they have enough room to kind of sit with their knees pulled up to their chest. And that's how they're supposed to sleep.

One survivor said, you go to sleep and the next morning the person next to you is cold because they're dead. The older woman died right away. I saw a fellow prisoner desperate from hunger bit off half of the ear of a woman who died and put it in her pocket to eat it later. It's reported prisoners will be asked to hold the top bars of their cell door and the guards would just come and use that person as a literal punching bag. Another person reports being thrown into a pottery kiln until she was knocked out from the heat. It's like a giant oven.

Then once she was passed out, they brought her out and waited until she was conscious and they punched out all her teeth. She had toothpicks shoved under her nail beds. She was forced to drink water, copious amounts of water until she vomited up everything. Another woman stated that she woke up and there were two full grown men guards standing on top of her stomach. She was unable to stand up for two weeks after that.

Two sisters were caught trying to escape. They were brought back to the camp and in front of all the other prisoners to teach them a lesson, they were forced to lift a heavy log up in the air until they gave up and it came down on them. The other prisoners were instructed to then go in and stomp on them and break all their bones. Finally, they were taped up to a wall to be publicly starved to death. It's like when you watch a flower withering.

Every time another prisoner would walk past, they would see more and more bone just protruding from the two girls until they were dead on the walls. Some reports even suggest that doctors come to prisons to practice surgeries, and instead of wasting money and resources, they will just pluck a random prisoner who doesn't need a surgery and practice opening them up and operating on their internal organs without anesthesia. We have no idea how much of these are true, and I hope most of them are not, but these are the stories of a lot of defectors.

so I just don't really see why they would lie. One prisoner said, "You quickly learn to tell the difference between the cry of a man screaming out in pain, or from fear, or from madness."

But one thing that we can say is a bit more confirmed are the heavy usage of stress positions in prison. Stress positions don't sound as bad compared to all the other methods of torture that we just discussed, but it's bad. The CIA employed stress positions on its notorious torture programs against terrorists. Stress positions are when you place a detainee in a very, very uncomfortable, unnatural position for lengthy periods of time. Some people say it's more painful than breaking a bone.

It causes long-term injuries without any scars. It's mentally exhausting. It's physically excruciating. It's humiliating. It causes muscle fatigue. It leads to muscle spasms. Like your whole body is shaking in pain and it stings in a very unique way. This is said to be used to break down the mental barriers of prisoners. There's something called the clock torture. Prisoners will be forced to stand on a table and they are read out loud a time on a clock.

They have to recreate it with their bodies. And then they have to hold that position until another time is called. They do this for hours, like 20 hours a day. Most of them end up collapsing in exhaustion and pain. And it could last for as long as the guards want. What do you mean by posing out the clock? So if it's like 10, you have to use your body to make it look like 10. But you can't have your legs planted. So you know how the easiest way would be like, oh, this is three. This is, you know.

But you can't do that. They get severely beaten if they don't have the right read. Now, a few of the more intense stress positions include scale, airplane, and motorcycle. The scale position, prisoners are made to stand on their tippy toes, knees bent, squatting. Then they have to extend their arms fully out in front of them. And these giant cinder blocks attached by ropes...

get clung onto their wrists. They have to keep the scales balanced. They cannot move. Within seconds, their entire body starts to tremble uncontrollably. I mean, no amount of willpower or fear is going to make this go away. But the guards don't care. If you move, if you make the scales unbalanced, you will be beaten and starved and likely thrown into solitary confinement.

The airplane pose consists of a prisoner standing on the tippy toes of one leg. The other leg is bent, so they're just balancing on one foot on their toes. Their arms have to be stretched out to their sides like an airplane. The motorcycle pose. The prisoner is forced on both toes, squatting very lowly down like they're sitting on an invisible motorcycle. They have to extend both arms in front of them like they're holding onto the motorcycle handlebars.

They have to maintain that position for however long the guards want. Sometimes it can be 20 hours a day. What makes this more sick is that a lot of the citizens of North Korea have never even seen an airplane or a motorcycle. One North Korean official who worked in the Kim residence as a maid, if you will, had never even seen a banana before all of this. So they've never seen motorcycles.

Or there's the pigeon pose. There are railings on the walls of the prison about two feet tall. Your arms get handcuffed behind your back. They get attached to that two feet tall wall railing. It's such an awkward position that you can't fully stand up. But you also cannot squat or sit down fully. You're half squatting. You can't even be doing a kimchi squat.

It's very uncomfortable. You're just kind of crunched up in a semi ball. No food, no water for three days. And they say something about that position makes you empty your insides from both sides. You end up urinating and defecating on yourself as well as vomiting up everything. And you cannot sleep for three days because your body cannot rest. One prisoner said, if you're hung like that, you urinate, you defecate, you throw up, you're totally dehydrated. It was the most painful of all tortures. It was so painful. I thought it was better to die.

These rules still apply when the prisoners go to sleep. One former prisoner turned defector said, More often than not, detainees are forced to dig their own graves because the chances of surviving and getting out are slim to none.

In prison number six of North Korea, one inmate got a very, very, very lucky call. He was allowed to use a shower that day. So for the past two years, he had been stuck in this prison, barely allowed to shower, brushing his teeth with salt. But today, he was going to get longer than the five minutes that he was normally allowed. So his trustee, which is like an inmate who works as a teacher's assistant, it's an inmate that the guards trust.

The trustee is watching over him, making sure that he doesn't do anything wrong. And for some reason, I guess the trustee really liked him. He let him shower a bit longer. So while the inmate is in there scrubbing as quickly as possible, feeling very vulnerable, naked in the shower, the trustee leans up against the wall, glances around and says, I know who you are. The man in the shower froze. You're that South Korean film director. Director Shin? You're married to that actress. Eunhee, no? No.

How was this possible? All foreign movies were banned in North Korea. Nobody in the prison, not even the guards knew who he was. Did you just say that you knew my wife, Eun-hee? Yeah, I did. Shin's head starts ringing. Do you know where she is? Is she here? She's just here, but now she's gone.

Before Shin could ask more questions, time was up. They had to go back to their cells. Director Shin had been trapped in North Korea for years looking for his ex-wife. I mean, some reports say they were still married, but wife, actress Choi Eun-hee. And now a suspicious guy in prison is telling him he knows who he is, he knows who his wife is, and that his wife had been in this very exact prison. Shin had a million questions that he wanted to ask during the next shower.

But here's the weird thing. How did he know what director Shin looked like? Even if South Korean movies were smuggled into North Korea, director Shin was behind the camera. How did he recognize him by his face? Was this another trap? Was this another setup? Some sort of test? Shin would have a lot of time to ponder if the man could be trusted. He would spend another two years in the North Korean detention center, 16 hours a day, each day in a stress position.

16 hours a day. In a stress position. How long time? For two and a half years. Every single day? Every single day.

There is a real-life Hunger Games, and it's called The Mask Games. It's hosted in North Korea. It takes place typically once a year, every year, in the world's largest arena, where tens of thousands of children scream in happiness or fear for their lives. And technically, you can go watch. Well, maybe not you. American citizens aren't allowed to visit North Korea, but they do accept tourists from other countries. The Mask Games is actually a tourist event. All you have to do is purchase a ticket.

Some international sponsors of these games are going to pay top dollar to see the games up close and personal.

Technically, the games aren't really games. It's just a gymnastics performance. There are no real games being played. It's not football. It's not basketball. It's a performance where tens of thousands, if not close to 100,000 people show up and they show their strength as a group. They will run out into what looks like a giant football field or a soccer field. It's actually close to 40 American football fields all in an enclosed indoor stadium. It's the largest arena in the world.

What? And these 100,000 people will form shapes with their bodies. They're coordinated. They're in sync. They're dancing along to music. They're singing, but they're also forming words. And then they're forming mosaics. They're forming a whole play with their bodies.

So instead of having trees as props on the side, you'll have like 10,000 people dressed up as a tree and they're moving and they're swaying because trees are moving with the wind. And then the new story calls for the trees to be moved to a different side and they keep. It's crazy the amount of moving parts that you see. It feels like a wave. It feels like you've programmed them with a computer and they're they're computer chips, but they're human.

And not a single one of them ever steps out of line. And not a single one of them goes 0.2 seconds faster than the rest. It's like they share one collective brain. And then on one side of the bleachers, there are more performers. They're in charge of the card screen. They're holding a stack of colored cards. They're like these giant poster cards, probably the size of a poster board. So think double your torso.

And on beat, they can make those poster cards depict the Kim dynasty, a person, a place, whatever mosaic they want. And it's not cartoonish. It's almost like a real screen. It's almost like you're watching a human jumbotron. It looks like an LED screen. But it's managed by individual humans. So every...

Like on screen, like every little block pixel is a human that's manually controlling it. And they have to move these poster cards very quickly. And most of them are kids. Children, not a single colored card is ever wrongfully depicted. Not a single person chooses the wrong colored card at the wrong time or a second late. Again, it's like they share one collective brain.

Most of the card flippers are children, and witnesses estimate that the crowd of children performing in the mass games is close to 30,000. In total, the group of performers makes up about 100,000 civilians. And it's all about a single heart society. It's like an Olympics opening ceremony, but even crazier. It's lengthy. There's multiple stories in each act. There's use of props, uniforms, spelling of words using thousands of bodies. Thousands of kids are in each performance.

I mean, some of them are chosen as young as five years old and they train every single day of their lives until they are deemed ready. Then they can finally take part in a mass game. And every year from then on, they will perform and they will practice for the next one and perform until they die.

The kids are forced to practice over eight hours a day, close to 13 hours a day, flipping colored cards that are larger than their upper bodies. They have to practice outside when the winters are in the negative degrees. And no pages have words, instructions, pictures, nothing. They can never get it crinkled. That book of colored poster cards is their Bible. They cannot ruin it. One netizen who went said, it's like Cirque du Soleil, but on steroids.

So it's not a real game in the sense that you win anything, but it's still a game. Because if you don't perform, if you misstep, if you don't scream loud enough, you could lose everything.

One tourist described it as deafening. Each child, a sea of tens of thousands of kids sitting one foot apart trying to scream louder than all the other kids. In the end, if the kids' throats aren't gone, if they haven't screamed enough, they are simply not honoring their regime enough. The consequences can involve concentration camps condemning three future generations of yours to years of lower class status. And in cases where a child messes up astronomically, like not flipping the right colored card, they could be executed.

This is where director Shin was dragged soon after he was kidnapped by North Korea. He felt completely alone watching as he stared at the children screaming until the veins on their neck were bulging out until they were on the brink of fainting until urine was trickling down their legs because they have to stand like that all day long. And the smell would spread throughout the stadium. It was a real life Hunger Games and director Shin felt completely alone, but he wasn't.

In the crowd was his ex-wife, Choi Eun-hee, trapped just like him, waiting for an escape. They would both be kidnapped and held by North Korea for years before they're reunited by Kim Jong-il. Do you know who the largest buyer of Hennessy, the liquor brand, was at one point? North Korea?

Kim Jong-il of North Korea. It is estimated that, calculated with inflation, he spent close to $4 million a year on just the Hennessy brand alone. Not liquor in total, just Hennessy liquor. It's like a cognac liquor. When he wanted something lighter, he liked $15,000 bottles of champagne. He owned, yeah, he had a very lavish lifestyle. He owns multiple cars, or he did own multiple cars.

armored Mercedes that were bulletproof, Cadillacs, Rolls Royces, speedboats, yachts, cruise ships, collection of racing cars, a private helicopter. He didn't own a plane because he always hated flying long term. But his favorite method of travel was private bulletproof train. He had a private bulletproof train.

To where? He could just travel around North Korea. Oh, the railroad? Yeah. He had 24-something resorts and villas all around North Korea that was just made for him. It's not a resort in the sense that other people can visit, but resort in the sense that they are that massive. They look like a five-star resort. It's estimated that he spent at least $2.5 billion building homes across the country for himself. Wow.

Every single piece of furniture in his homes were imported from Switzerland or France. Each clock was handmade in Switzerland. And all his residences had to be set at 71 degrees whether he was there or not. Even though the electricity is rationed in North Korea, he needs it to be 71 degrees in every room.

Before he arrives, all the attendants have maybe a minute to spray his favorite scent of perfume everywhere. If he walks into a room and he doesn't smell it, I'm imagining blood would be shed. He had full-blown casinos in his estates, ski slopes, bowling alleys, roller skating rinks. He also had one residence where he just keeps deer as pets. You're talking about Kim Jong-il. Yes. So Kim Jong-il is the dad of Kim Jong-un, also the father of Kim Jong-nam.

Same dad. Yeah. Different mothers. We're going to get into it, though. Yeah. But it's rumored that another building was constructed three stories below water level with thick glass.

Like the Atlantis Hotel. Underwater hotels. Yes. Just a panoramic view of underwater life. One residence had a 165 foot long underground swimming pool in the residence, which most residential pools are about 20 feet long. This was 165 feet underground. And most things that is underground for the Kim dynasty are bomb proof, like nuclear weapon proof is what they say.

Kim had water slides for his above-ground pools that make the place look like a full-scale amusement park. And that's just one of his pools. And he just had a thing for water. Many of his residences would sit on artificial man-made lakes. Kim said water made him feel calm.

He even had a party building that he called the Fish House because it had a 25-foot-long floor-to-ceiling aquarium, a large ocean fish aquarium in the second floor ballroom. At every party, the people in attendance would change. They were always the one that Kim would favorite. And he would call them, drink with them, eat with them. And they could be switched in and out. But one constant was the pleasure squad.

The pleasure squad was in attendance at every single party. The pleasure squad consisted of the most beautiful woman in North Korea, handpicked by Kim Jong-il. They were handpicked by Kim and then divided into three separate groups. The entertainment group. They would come to the fish house. They would sing and dance at the parties. Then you had the happiness group. They would go around the party to each of the guests or whoever Kim ordered them to, and they would massage them anywhere and everywhere they wanted.

Then you had the satisfaction group. They provided sexual services to anybody Kim wanted. Interestingly enough, Kim never touched any of the girls at any of his parties.

All three groups? All three groups. But he would force them to sing, dance, massage, and do other things at the parties. Sometimes it's alleged that group orgies take place at these fish house parties. And they loved playing bizarre games, like with the Pleasure Squad. Allegedly, there was this one game that they would play, and if one of the Pleasure Squad girls lost, they would have their private parts hair shaved in front of everyone. Yeah.

There's a few strict criteria when it comes to who qualifies to be a pleasure squad girl. You cannot be taller than 5'4", because that's how tall Kim Jong-il is. He doesn't want them to be taller than him. You have to be free of scars and blemishes. You need a soft, feminine voice, and being untouched is imperative. And you have to be between the ages of 13 and 15 to start.

Side note, untouched girls are specifically chosen because, and take this with a grain of salt, but it's believed that the Kims believed the girl's life force or chi would be absorbed if you were the first one to be intimate with them. So you take their life spirit away from them. So the girls are allegedly subjected to horrendous medical tests to ensure that they are untouched. And then once they're touched, they are trained to basically become untouched.

sexual robot slaves. Like they are not allowed to have their own individual thoughts, feelings. Like they are just to be ordered around. They are trained for six months learning how to service higher ups in North Korea. They take intense classes for manners, behavior, massage, intimacy, singing, dancing. Once they pass training, the girls are forced to entertain and sleep with whoever the leading family wants.

It was recently a scandal with Kim Jong-il's son, the current leader, where he spent allegedly over $2 million in foreign lingerie for the Pleasure Squad. Because the Pleasure Squad seems to be a generational thing. Like, they'll create their own Pleasure Squads. How did that news even come out? Yeah. I think because they imported it from Europe and maybe...

No, there's no official number on how many girls are in the pleasure squad, but it can be estimated to be about 2000. They never have a say in anything that happens to them. And these girls are retired at around 20 years old because that's just like way too old to be attractive now. And their reward, their payment for being essentially kidnapped and trafficked is to be able to marry a military officer.

But the active members will be at each of the fish house parties, usually wearing revealing clothing, dancing, singing, entertaining, pouring glasses, flirting, whatever Kim wants, he gets. And these parties, I mean, really, they are like the Capitol parties at the Hunger Games. Do you remember when the Capitol would host parties and all the elite would take these pills that make them throw up everything they just consumed so that they can go back in and eat more?

That's what these parties felt like. At the fish house, every single surface, all the tables were filled with lobsters, steak, pastries, bear feet imported from Russia, which is a whole thing. Bear paws are usually illegal, but they go for about $1,000 a paw. You cook it in soup, and the whole meaning is if you eat a bear paw, you will get the power of a bear. And usually the paws are hacked off in front of the eater.

The bear is still alive. They come in chained and they hack off the paw. Then the bear is now driven out and they get tortured by being beaten with steel sticks until they die. The idea is that bears are in a state of adrenaline when they die because they're being beaten up and the meat will become more tender.

Additionally, the table is always filled with shark fin soup, which is also another controversial dish. A lot of fishers will go out into the ocean, catch a shark, cut off their fins, and throw them back into the water where they're just bleeding out and slowly drowning because they can't swim. There is no nutritional value in a shark fin, nor is there any taste, but some people believe it to be a magical essence of life.

The tables are filled with 800 to $1,500 bottles of Hennessy. There's large glass bottles with a yellowish liquor inside and sitting floating around is a venomous snake. It's called snake venom liquor, a delicacy where venomous snakes are infused with liquor in the hopes that the venom's essence will be in each sip. People describe the aftertaste of snake venom liquor as being a fishy chicken.

Sometimes the snakes are dunked into the liquor alive, but instead of dying, they go into hibernation and become alive when the bottle is opened. But it is considered quite a delicacy.

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But there are no such things as free lunches. If Kim asks you a question at one of these fish house parties, addresses you during the meal, you have to jump up, stand at attention, even with a mouthful of shark fin soup and respond, yes, sir. You are to stand in that position until Kim feels like, you know what? It's time for you to be seated again.

Kim would be at the center of all of this, directing the party. And whatever he said, regardless of if it was joking around or completely drunk and he's just talking out of his mouth, there would be an assistant standing right behind him, writing down every single thing he says on pen and paper. And whatever he says at that party would become an official order and law the next day. Kim would fire or promote people for random things. You know how to eat shark fin soup well. You must be a spoiled little brat. Demoted. Sent into prison.

Just completely random, uncalled for, unpredictable. So one minute, they're a guest. Yeah. Like having a party, thinking, look like they're having the time of their life. Next minute, they're in prison. Exactly. So they're not really a guest here. No. They're all like actors. No one's having fun. I see. Sometimes in the middle of dinner, he would scream, army! Army!

Everyone would stop mid-shoot, eyes go wide, food hanging out of their mouth. They would reach under their seats, rush to put on an army uniform that's taped underneath their dinner seat, and they would start jogging around in a circle around the table until Kim tells them, Stop! Enough!

Then they would sit back down and soon enough he would scream, Navy! And they would reach down and grab the Navy uniform, put it on, and then just run around in circles around the table until he decided, eh, that's enough stimulation. He liked to watch people squirm. He would tell the female dancers to strip completely naked and dance around seductively. The men then were instructed to dance with them. But if you touch a woman, I'll consider you a thief. The men would be terrified for their lives.

Allegedly, there was one time where a man that had frequented Kim's parties, he went home and he told his wife a few things that he saw at these gatherings. And the wife, being a good citizen of North Korea, felt like these parties were immoral and it goes against what the Supreme Leader would want. So this is when Kim Jong-il was not the Supreme Leader. This is when his daddy was, Kim Il-sung. He's the heir apparent. He's going to take over soon, but he's not the leader. He's not the head dog in charge yet.

So she writes the Supreme Leader a very long letter, kind, polite, about what his son was up to during his night shifts. The letter did not go to Daddy Kim. It went straight to Kim Jong-il, who held another party. But this time, husband and wife were both invited. In front of all the guests, Kim stated that this woman was a traitor. And he brought out a rifle.

The woman looked at her husband. Her husband looked at her and then looked at Kim Jong-il and said, can I do the honors, sir? And he shot his wife to death at the party. And then the party went on.

allegedly there were several nights where giant six foot long diameter balls like giant balls would be hung up in the ceiling filled with presents kim would shoot at the ball with a rifle making it explode presents all over the floor and all the guests would fight each other for the best presents and most of the presents were just like food kim thought it was amusing he liked it

Meanwhile, the country of North Korea is said to look like a war zone. No signs of people or life in most areas. Everywhere looks like a ghost town. The only thing that is around are pictures of Kim Il-sung, the dad, hung up on every wall of every building. There's no street light. So at night, the entire country is pitch black. Everybody gets sorted into a caste system called the Songban system. And every single person is assigned a rank. But it's not even just based on you. It's based on your past generations.

If your parents have tainted blood, and you know what they consider tainted blood? If your parents before the Korean War had owned a little store, a mom and pop store, you have tainted blood because that's a sign of capitalism. And you are filth.

When there's food shortages in North Korea, the food rations are concentrated to the top of the songbun classes. The lower songbuns will be the first to starve to death. And the chances of starving to death are pretty high. The food rations per person in North Korea are sometimes as low as 11 ounces a day for adults.

This is someone who is not a prisoner. Prisoners can get as low as five ounces a day. Just to give you some context, we probably eat anywhere between 48 to 64 ounces of food on average to maintain our weight, not gain weight. 11 ounces of non-nutritious food is starvation. People were so hungry, they laid traps for birds, rats, mice. The entire country's frog population is extinct because people resorted to eating all the frogs.

People dug through cow manure to find undigested corn to eat. There were reports of parents being thrown in prison for eating their children and cannibalism stories starting to spread during a four-year span. It's estimated 3 million people in North Korea died from starvation.

And yet every single citizen was gifted a portrait of the great leaders and a white polishing cloth that they could be used only for wiping these portraits. Every day they're instructed to praise the portraits. And if there ever is a fire, if there's ever an earthquake, you could lose your whole family member. You could lose your whole house, all your worldly belongings. But you better not lose that portrait because every morning you have to wake up and thank the great leader for the food, even though there is no food.

There is no publicly known net worth for the Kim family of North Korea, but we can assume based on their position and their spending that they are one of the richest families in the world. Some people estimate in the hundreds of billions, we'll never get an accurate figure. The Kim dynasty consisted of Kim Il-sung, who was the very first leader of North Korea. The citizens in North Korea called him the great son of life.

He had a few children. And after a very dangerous game of succession, Kim Jong Il takes over as the supreme leader. He's the one that this whole story is going to be about. So we're just going to call him Kim. But he's not actually the current leader of North Korea. The current leader is his son, Kim Jong Un, who took over in 2011. And then allegedly he had his half brother assassinated. But that was covered in another video and we'll link it below.

At this point in the succession games, Kim Il-sung, the founder of North Korea, is still in charge.

He's got a bunch of kids. And Kim Jong Il is probably his heir apparent, but he hasn't solidified it. He hasn't announced it to the world or even to his own people. So now that we're somewhat acquainted with the Kim lineage, let's talk about their business models. Because I'm not saying this, but many, many people have said that the Kim dynasty runs their finances like a crime syndicate. They run their finances more like a mafia family.

A lot of the Kim's fortunes come from gold mines, exports of goods, factories that are set up where civilians are forced to work for basically no money and their products are exported to make a profit for the Kim's. Allegedly, North Korea is a huge, huge producer of counterfeit items, including counterfeit cigarettes, medicine, including fake Viagra, counterfeit bills. Yeah, counterfeit bills is a whole thing. At one point, they were one of the larger counterfeiters of the U.S. $100 bill.

And the $100 bills, by the way, they're called super notes by the CIA because they were pretty good. Some even speculate that the Kims were involved in the drug trade, primarily opium, cocaine, meth. So Kim Jong Il, the son of the Supreme Leader at the time, was in charge of running a lot of these operations. And allegedly, while he holds this very powerful spot, he's just not satisfied.

Because there's really only one role that Kim Jong Il wants, which is becoming the supreme leader of North Korea. And legend has it, he's ready for it. At just three weeks old, legend has it, Kim Jong Il was walking around the army bases. The average child starts walking at around 10 months or 44 weeks, but he's three weeks old.

At just eight weeks old, Kim was talking. The average child starts talking around 15 months or 65 weeks, but he's just eight weeks old. And at just three years old, it's stated, legend has it, Kim Jong-il walked into a classroom that had maps of the evil Japan on the wall. He dipped his finger into the ink jar. He walked up to the map, smeared a certain part of Japan with black ink, and the second his finger landed on that map, violent typhoons and hurricanes started pouring

pounding down in Japan in that exact region. The average child does not ever do that, but he did that at three years old. And at 10 years old, he was fighting on the front lines of the guerrilla battles. He had a gun in his hand. And just to add another one to the list, allegedly during his very first game of golf, he did 11 holes in one. To give you context, Tiger Woods has only had 20 holes in ones during his entire career. Kim had 11 during his first ever game.

Yeah, now, these stories are taught every day to the North Korean citizens. From the time a North Korean child is old enough to walk, which is usually not three weeks, they are taught these stories. It's like being taught the ABCs. Maybe more important in North Korea, even though it's all a lie.

But did it matter? Because a good story is a good story. That's how Kim Jong Il felt. But in reality, they're just stories. It's been said by others that Kim Jong Il is really not that special. Had he been born to any other family, one might even call him average.

Ironically, Kim is said to hate authority and discipline as a kid. He was predisposed to having these temper tantrums and he would throw these huge parties. He just loved a never-ending good time. That's it. He didn't care about anything else. He didn't care about studying. He just spent his entire day in his movie theater. All he did was watch movies. Kim Jong-il was a cinemaholic. He was obsessed with movies.

Now, side note, non-North Korean made films are completely banned in North Korea. If you get caught watching a film from a different country, you will get sent to a harsh labor camp for at least five years. Your parents will probably have to go for at least a year just for birthing you, birthing someone who would dare break a law.

But not for Kim. One of his first projects was actually a smuggling ring, a network to smuggle foreign movies like from the United States, from Europe, from South Korea, from Japan into North Korea. He called it Rescue Operation Number 100. With 250 employees, he had most foreign movies translated and dubbed into Korean. There were translators, subtitle writers, dubbing voice actors, archivists, administrators.

He had one of the largest private collections of movies probably in the entire world. But is that behind Daddy's Back? Behind Daddy's Back. But what about the 250 employees working in the department? Weren't they breaking the law by watching so many foreign films? No. Each film was divided into like 500 different parts. There was just audio, then just visual, then both. And each employee only got clips to translate of each movie. So they had no idea what was going on ever. Like it was just spliced together. Right.

He became the head of the propaganda film studio, which sounds like a position that your dad gives you when they're like, I don't know what else to give you. So just like go do this, right? You get a fancy title. There you go, my son. But it's actually a very important role.

At one point, North and South Korea were fighting about everything. Like they were trying to be the better country in regards to every industry, including filmmaking. South Korea was getting ahead with some films that were gaining international recognition. I mean, it wasn't like parasite level, but it was still better than what North Korea was doing at the time. Kim's dad thought Kim had a special eye for film. And by special eye, I mean,

He just liked watching them like the rest of us. I mean, I can't find any reports that he was particularly talented at film or the conception of storylines. But there is one story that's told over and over and over to the North Korean people. When Kim was seven, he was watching a North Korean made film with his dad. He's seven. And at the end, everyone got up and they're clapping and everyone's cheering. And he walked up to the producer, seven years old, and he said, the film showed winter scenes of the falling snow.

There is snow everywhere in the scene, but not on the heads and shoulders of the actors. And the snow is so clearly made of cotton wool. We should try salt next time. Also, the trick shots are not good. I have better ways they can be filmed.

And that is the story. Filmmaker, protege, the next mastermind of cinema in the world. So Kim takes over. He starts making movies to spread propaganda. He created a 10 million square foot studio in North Korea, which is bigger than all the Hollywood studio lots. And working in his moviemaking department was probably the best job that you could ever get. He created a department store for film workers where they could buy clothes for

that are usually not available in their rations. They could even eat chocolate sometimes. A big part of why Kim became the next leader of North Korea has a lot to do with these movies. They're not great. They're not even good. But they all praised his dad.

They all praised the current leader. I see. They got the public riled up and excited about the future of the country. They were a great tool for propaganda in the beginning. Because think about it this way. Books and lectures, they take time to absorb. It's harder, more expensive to disperse. One book a person? No, that's expensive. One book per classroom? But how do you make sure each kid gets it? And how fast can they get through the entire book? And how do you know they're absorbing the right message? Right?

Movies are the easiest way. The population will enjoy it. They'll be so thankful for quality entertainment. And the entire movie would just be an ad for Kim Il-sung, the Kim dynasty, and devotion to North Korea. Not every town had a movie theater, so they would have these traveling screens with projectors to go town from town. And to make sure everybody got the message at the end, after each movie, there would be a criticism session where...

Nobody who wants to stay alive would be criticizing anything, but rather everyone responds to questions being asked about the message of the movie.

And this was all Kim's idea. And it worked. Every movie showed his father as the greatest being that ever existed. Loyalty to Kim Il-sung and the nation was the greatest virtue that one could have. Kim Il-sung was quite pleased with his son. He took his films into great consideration when thinking about who's going to be the next heir to the nation.

But like any great film director, Kim Jong-il would have his first movie affair. Just like director Shin. He fell in love with the lead actress and shit goes down. It's estimated that out of the 26 million people in North Korea, only 30,000 people own cars. And they're all government issued. So you get it as a gift from the government. Now, there are barely any cars on the road at any given time. So Hae-ram, let's call her Hae-ri,

So Hye-ri is confused when she hears a car honking outside her bedroom window in the village of North Korea. Like who the hell could possibly be outside right now? She pokes her head out and there is the supreme leader's son, heir apparent Kim Jong-il standing next to his armored Mercedes. Get in. Definitely in order. She grabs a jacket, runs into the backseat. The second most powerful man in all of North Korea is now staring at her.

No one can ever know about this, including my father, the Supreme Leader. You got it? I'm going to take you to the hospital. Your sister is about to give birth to my very first child.

What? Actress Song Hye-rim, not to be confused with her sister Hye-ram, was pregnant with Kim's very first child. Kim dropped the actress's sister off at the hospital so she wouldn't be alone to give birth. There was no way he could get in there. His dad had to never know about this. This could ruin his chance at succession because this is not an optimal marriage. By the way, the actress is married and already has kids. There's no way the supreme leader of North Korea can be in a scandalous marriage.

So his dad wouldn't choose him to be the next leader. No one can know. So he waits outside in the car, in the dark, and he stares up at the hospital window and he's anxious. He and the actress had set up a code. If she flicks the light a certain number of times, that means the baby is a boy. A different number of times, that means the baby is a girl. He waits and he counts the flickering of the lights. It's a boy. A baby boy. He would be named Kim Jong-nam.

Oh my goodness. How could anybody have guessed in the next round of succession in North Korea, Kim Jong-nam would be killed by two girls who thought they were filming a YouTube prank. Kim staring at the comedian, the comedian staring at Kim Jong-nam, the kid, the kid staring back and forth from the comedian to his father, back to the comedian, and then bursting into tears. He's a fake dad. He's a fake. Kim looked upset. Take him away.

The comedian was dragged out by the guards. Kim Jong-nam, Kim's first son, had a favorite South Korean comedian and he requested his dad to see him live rather than on TV. But that wasn't really feasible. So Kim ordered his men to find someone across the nation that resembled this comedian, give them plastic surgery against his will, and then train him to talk like the comedian and have the same mannerisms and then give a live performance. Either way, that comedian was going to die because no one knows about Kim Jong-nam's existence at this point.

He gets brought in and Kim Jong-nam knows it's not the real one. He catches on. And that's when Kim thought to himself, that was annoying. I should have just kidnapped the real one.

It's not like this was new to them. North Korea actually went through a kidnapping phase, a kidnapping era, if you will. All around the world, civilians who had no affiliations with their own government, even high ranking, like they're not high ranking. They're not high security clearance positions. Just random normal civilians would go missing. In each case, authorities assumed that they ran away or some sort of seedy individual was out lurking, kidnapping and killing them or some other bad thing had happened to them. But no, it was Kim Jong Il.

Kim Jong-il loved a good kidnapping storyline. He learned it from all the James Bond movies he watched. I'm not even kidding you. There are reports that Kim Jong-il believed James Bond movies were docudramas. Yeah. So all these secret spies holding people hostage, kidnapping people, assassinations, money heist. He thought they were all dramatized recreations of things that happened in the West. And he felt left out. So he's like, I'm going to do the same thing. I'm going to kidnap people.

Later, he said, well, I didn't kidnap people. My men did. My men were overzealous in their patriotism. So they kidnap people from Japan, South Korea, London, Copenhagen, Oslo, Hong Kong, Macau, Beirut. It's reported that South Korea had the most abductions from North Korea. China and Japan are likely second and third. Probably the most notable kidnapping and the one that made people go, what?

What was when five high school students went missing on the beach off the coast of South Korea? All five kids vanished. Authorities chalked it up to a very sad, very unfortunate drowning at sea incident with the teenagers who clearly didn't know better, with the exception of their loved ones. Their loved ones are like, no, my kids are out there somewhere.

The whole world moved on. 20 years later, the five high school students were now middle-aged and discovered to be in a spy school in North Korea. They were taken by North Korea for the sole purpose of training North Koreans. Training North Koreans? What does that mean? There's a lot of North Korean spies acting as locals in countries all over the world. Mm-hmm.

So how do you North Korea? I mean, you look at pictures, you look at the way they dress, you look at the way they talk. It's nothing like how you would expect someone in China, Japan or South Korea to talk. So they kidnap locals and they make them train North Koreans. Cadence, culture, speaking, memes, clothing choices, even how to use a credit card. Everything has to be taught to these North Korean spies. They get a fake identity. Then they get sent to live in these countries acting like a local.

According to firsthand accounts, there is at least one confirmed spy school in the mountains of North Korea. The spy school is said to have large scale models of Seoul in different cities around the world that are pretty precise. It's said that the facilities have tunnels that are underground that are 40 feet tall that are bomb proof tunnels.

They have scales and models of buildings all around the world that are very important, like the Blue House, which is the White House of South Korea. And each kidnapped foreigner would serve the North Korean regime and have very big parts to play in Kim Jong-il's grand scheme of control and power. And director Shin and actress Eun-hee would have one of the biggest roles to play.

There's a famous mountain in the Korean peninsula. Every Korean knew about this mountain, but the peninsula was divided and Mount Paektu was now in North Korea. This is allegedly where Kim Jong Il was born. At the height of winter, temperatures are in the negatives. Kim's mom is trying to stay warm in a little cabin in the woods, and she's about to give birth.

This is the same thing as like those old school Chinese legends. Yeah.

The sky clears up. Exactly. The baby was so healthy that when Kim Jong-il first opened his mouth and cried, all the fighters in the mountains could hear it. They came out of their tents and they started bursting into tears, crying. That log cabin where Kim was born was preserved and most citizens were expected to regularly visit and educate themselves. Director Shin and actress Eun-hee both had to go. Separately, of course. I don't know if I should use this word, but it was goofy.

Yeah, it was goofy. The log cabin was supposed to have withstood decades of storms just crashing down on the harsh mountainside. Two wars. But why did it look brand new? It didn't even just look brand new. It felt like a prop. Like, you know, the difference between a real cabin and a cabin that you would find in Disneyland. Like there's just something off about the dimensions and the wear and tear. It just is confusing. That's what it looks like. It looked like a prop for an amusement park.

But director Shin and actress Eun-hee were separately brought and trying to convince their teachers. This is, this is, yeah, no, I believe it now. This makes sense. This is where he was born.

Both of them at first had tried fighting the indoctrination, but it just wasn't working. They would be brought to museums where there would be paintings that depicted the Americans and what the Americans did to North Koreans. There's literally pictures of Americans skinning North Korean children alive, burning the babies in a bonfire, turning them into s'mores, scalping them, taking off their skin off their heads, and then putting it on their own heads while they're all breathing and...

just out of pure hedonistic joy. They also showed pictures of Americans surrendering to North Korea, hanging white flags out their windows because Kim Il-sung was such a great battler. He won the war against the Americans. And yet, there were also framed New York Times articles that praised the Kim family. Side note, you know how you can get those gag gifs of fake newspaper articles? Those were the ones on the wall in the museums of North Korea. Mm-hmm.

And director Shin and actress Suni are like, wow, okay, great. When the two weren't going on field trips, they were forced to read multiple hours a day, sing songs that praise the Kim dynasty. They were forced to write love letters to the Kims. It would read along the lines of our father, our leaders, undefeated in hundreds of battles, leaders who refused to kneel before the US imperialist, light of our people, etc, etc, etc, for 10 pages long.

They were told, not everyone is privileged enough to write to the Kims. You should feel thankful. They said you could walk around North Korea and you could say something as simple as, good morning, and someone would respond, yes, it is a beautiful day thanks to the inspired teachings of our beloved revolutionary leader who has filled our hearts with the truth. It is a good morning indeed.

Director Shin and Eun-hee were also told that the South Korean people were starving and miserable, that it was better to be in North Korea than the South. The South Koreans are living hell with traffic accidents, collapsing buildings. 120 people disappear every single day. It's a place filled with criminals. American soldiers shoot at South Korean soldiers as target practice. They run them over for fun. They essay mothers and daughters in the dark alleyways. American soldiers are taking little South Korean boys in as intimate slaves on their camps.

Everything reeks of American sewage. Americans just shit everywhere. And the South Koreans have to clean it up. Clearly, these two have lived in the South and knew that none of this was true. They could easily argue otherwise. But why bother? Indoctrination leaves very little room for good questions and open conversations. So once Kim Jong-il feels like both of them, Euni and Shin, have separately been fully indoctrinated, it was time to reunite them after years of being in North Korea, separated.

Euni was sitting at the table at another one of those fish house parties. There's nothing exciting or thrilling about watching everyone run around the table whenever Kim feels like he's lacking stimulation. So she's sitting there just staring at her food. But definitely something is in that air that night. Kim looks pleased with himself. I mean, he usually did, but more so tonight. And another guest comes up to Euni, grabs her elbow and says, today will be the happiest day of your life.

Eunice looking like I highly doubt it. Okay, cuz I haven't felt happiness in years She just stares down at her food for the rest of the evening and then they all start screaming look up look up Eunice slowly lifts her head thinking it's another some sort of general or some sort of North Korean actress She turns her head to the entrance and there was a very very thin very frail man that she half recognized

as her husband, Director Shin. And it looked like his soul had been ripped out of him. And for a moment, Eun-hee had so many feelings. She was devastated because what the hell is he doing here? Why does he look like that? Is he okay? And there was a guilty side of her that felt happy that she's no longer alone. And that made her feel guilty all over again. And she slowly walked up to him because she felt like she was approaching a ghost, like a sick joke that's not real.

But he lifted his hand to touch her face and they embraced and sobbed into each other's arms. Everyone in the room thought that they were so happy to be reunited. So they clapped and cheered and Kim Jong Il got up and he laughed like it was one of the best silly little April Fool's pranks that he's ever played. And he pulls director Shin to one side of him, actress Eun Hee to one side and forces a picture. And he smacks him on the back and says, relax, this isn't going to end up in the South Korean papers.

This is not? Yeah. They both sit back down at the tables. Eun-hee watches Shin as director Shin laughs and jokes about movies with Kim. Shin crinkles his eyebrow and watches Eun-hee as she speaks pleasantly with all the other guests. And they all both look like they're at home, at ease with their lives. And they try to stare into each other's eyes and analyze. What if, what if one of them had been successfully brainwashed?

After dinner, Kim thought it was reasonable that the two stay in the same villa because he wants them to remarry. He wants them to have a wedding ceremony to celebrate this reunification. It's a whole thing. But not that Euni and Shin are complaining. Like they had been alone in this foreign country for years without anybody. They want to be around each other. But they're also nervous because they don't know if one of them is a Kim Jong-il supporter now. So once they shut that door to their room with the guards outside, there was just silence.

And then Shin looks at Euni. Euni looks at Shin. Shin looks at her and says, have you been brainwashed? And the two bust out laughing and there's tears just streaming down their face. I mean, there's just so much to tell each other, but they would have to do it bit by bit in unsupervised walks around the back. Or sometimes they would go to the bathroom, turn on all the faucets and whisper in a corner because every house in every room of every place in North Korea is likely bugged.

Euni told her ex-husband about how she was kidnapped. She had gone to Hong Kong for a movie deal. Ever since their divorce with, you know, everything going on, their businesses had started to fall apart because they were no longer the power couple in the movie industry. Opportunities were few and far between. And Euni got this call that a Hong Kong-based investor wanted her to direct a film but needed to have an in-person meeting with her. Euni thought, yeah, okay, fine. Maybe it's too good of an opportunity. But she needed it.

So she's like, remember the movie deal I told you about? I should have listened to you. Director Shin was actually the one that told her it was alarming and that she was likely being scammed, but she didn't believe him. She thought that he's just jealous because he's getting ripped apart in the papers about how he cheated on Eun-hee and has this younger mistress. And he just doesn't like the idea of her succeeding without him.

So she goes to Hong Kong. The investor gets her personal tour guide. Let's call her Lily. Lily was a middle-aged woman who brought along her 12-year-old daughter. And the two of them would just show Euni around Hong Kong, really wooing her.

They're hanging out around the shore when a motorboat comes up to them in the water. Euni thought it was just kind of dangerously close, but it all happened so fast. Foreign men in really long, really bizarre wigs jump out, grab the group, throw them onto the motorboat. Euni's convinced that she's being robbed or these are like pirates. They're now speeding faster into the deep water. Euni needs to do something for everybody's sake. She looks up and Lily, her guide, is incredibly calm. She's smoking a cigarette, enjoying the breeze.

What's going on? Everything's gonna be alright, Euni. Did Euni know that she was being kidnapped by North Korea? Euni would later say, yes. The wigged men knew her name. How do you guys know my name? Because we're Chosun.

Huge context here. In South Korea, we call ourselves like 한국사람, like 한국, right? Which is a Korean person. But in North Korea, they call themselves 조선, 조선준. 조선, yes. Yeah, so it's like olden day. Yeah, that's what Korea was called before. Yes, but now it's like 한국사람, right? And it's like, it's the difference of someone going, I'm American versus I'm a frontiersman. It's like very bizarre. But...

The boat had all the different national flags of neighboring countries so that they could switch it out depending whose waters they were on. That's when Euni knew everything had been thoroughly mapped out, if you will. That meant her being taken to North Korea was all part of some sort of weird, bigger plan, and she wanted nothing to do with it. She tried to jump off the boat into the ocean, but one of the long-haired men, they grabbed her, slammed her back down, and she was dragged into a cabin where she was drugged into a slumber for eight days.

She would periodically wake up and she would feel the boat swaying and she would stare up and there would just be a portrait of Kim Il-sung staring down at her.

Director Shin saw the same painting staring at him on the boat. He told Eun-hee that he had gone to Hong Kong looking for her because the last time he heard from her was, hey, I'm going to Hong Kong for this movie deal. And then she vanished. And then all the press, police and reporters thought that he had something to do with it. He found out that Lily, that woman who was giving her a tour of Hong Kong, was actually a North Korean citizen. Not

Not only that, there was a man named Mr. Kev. Mr. Kev had lived in Hong Kong for years and had worked with Shin Films for years now. He was the one that told Euni that he knows an investor who wants to work with her. So now he's helping director Shin look for Euni. He was a North Korean spy living in Hong Kong. For years? For years. He worked with them for years, but he was a spy. He was a spy.

Wow, you can't trust anyone, huh? No. When director Shin went to Hong Kong to look for Eun-hee, he was the only one that helped. And ultimately, he's the one that facilitated his kidnapping, which happened just the same. Motorboat, four men in atrocious long-haired wigs jumped at him, threw a bag over his head, but it was more like a sack. They rolled it down all the way, covered his whole body. They cut a slit where his nose is, almost cutting him on the face. They sprayed chloroform inside. He was in and out of sleep during his trip to North Korea.

When he arrived, his house was beautifully stocked. All of his favorite cosmetics, favorite skincare brands back at home, clothing perfectly tailored, like perfectly tailored, 32-inch sleeves, 16.5-inch collars, filling the closet. When he sat down for dinner, a woman came up and placed a singular bowl of cold noodles in front of him. Euni got a whole feast, but he got a singular bowl. She bent down and said, we heard cold noodles are your absolute favorite. Is it though? Yeah.

Director Shin tried to escape North Korea into China twice. Yeah, Euni never tried to escape. She was just depressed. She was locked up and depressed. She never tried to escape. Sometimes the most she would do is just scream in the direction of South Korea at the top of her lungs.

Yeah, but director Shin, he's trying. And both were risky decisions, both horribly planned. One time he stole a guard's Mercedes that was parked outside the house that he was locked in. Okay, so the only reason he was able to steal the car was because so little people drive cars in North Korea. So little people even know how to drive. So little people have access to be near a car. And even if you steal a car per se, where would you sell it without getting caught? Where would you even put that car?

As a result, everyone just kind of left their keys in the cars when they got out.

The guard left his key in the car. Shin escaped out of the house, started driving as fast as he could in the direction of China. He ends up crashing into a ditch because there's not a lot of well-made roads in North Korea. He realized he's not heading towards China. He took the wrong direction. He's heading towards South Korea. So his new plan now is to jump into the Imjin River and swim to South Korea, which really bad plan, by the way, like this only works in the movies.

Injin River is nicknamed the River of the Dead because so many bodies get swept down into the South Korea from there. It runs from North Korea to South Korea across the DMZ line. So for those unfamiliar, there's what's called the DMZ Parallel in the middle of the Korean Peninsula. It separates South and North Korea, and it's 165 miles long, two and a half miles wide. It's no man's land. It's filled with landmines. It's filled with armed guards on both sides.

You run, they shoot. Thankfully, he didn't get into the water and instead he found a train. He snuck up the side of the train. He got to the top and he's like, this is actually heading in the opposite way. So now we're going back to China. He ends up falling asleep on top of the train and was caught.

He was thrown in prison. Once he got out, he immediately started planning another escape. This time he wanted to play mind games. He found a hole in the wall of the house that he was trapped in. And he thought, you know what? If I just hide in this wall for as long as possible and the officers are out there searching for me, they're going near the borders of China and South Korea, then I can sneak out. Then I can run and they won't be looking for me. They won't expect it. But like what?

What was they doing again? They were filming movies, no? Not yet. They're being indoctrinated. Oh, this was this period. They were just trying to brainwash it. Okay, got it. They're just trapped in a house with anything that they want. If they want something expensive that doesn't risk escaping or communicating with the outside world, they would get it. You want 25 lobster tails for every meal? You could get it.

Kim Jong-il was willing to do whatever they wanted. As long as they took their little lessons, they got indoctrinated, they didn't try to escape. And then he would test them with making movies because Kim Jong-il is very paranoid. He does not want to give them any sort of camera gear or anything until he can trust that they are on North Korea's side. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so he's trying to escape at that point. Yeah. And this lasted for years, you're saying? Years.

Yeah. With his second escape, which was very quickly after the first one, he was jailed and this time for two years. He was confident that he was never going to get out of that prison. So he carved into his jail cell wall. Shin Sang-wook died here.

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But Shin didn't know that that level of torture was just the beginning. That was the start. Because there is something worse than prison for director Shin and actress Eun-hee. It's bad movies. A bad movie is a bad movie. And all the North Korean movies that they were forced to sit and watch together felt like a separate kind of torture. They were the same stories repackaged in different fonts. So repetitive, so surface level, so bad.

How many times can the Kim family be heroes and everyone die for the nation and for the Kims? How many times? Why is everyone always crying for the savior Kim and how great he is and how much they want to die for him? Not only that, just watching the way it's filmed, the angles, the props, the effects, it's driving director Shin up the wall. He's going crazy. There's no common sense in North Korean movies. No efficiency. Nothing. It's a money pit. If there's a scene in someone's office, then there's another scene outside on the street, which

which is a set. Then another scene back in the office. The production team in North Korea would film in chronological order of the movie scenes. So they would build the office set, film two seconds, break it down, move it out the way, then build the street set, film two seconds, break it all the way down, build up the office set again, film two seconds. Instead of filming both office scenes in the office set in one go.

Actors and actresses would just randomly be sent to prison in the middle of filming and instead of finding a replacement or trying to fix the movie, they would just cut out all their parts and release the movie as is. So like most of the movie doesn't even make sense. It's Swiss cheese of a storyline. When there were Western characters in the movies, because remember every movie is about how bad everyone, mainly the US is, a Korean actor would have to wear a white powder all over their face and body, wear a wig, and talk in a really dumb sounding Korean accent.

If there are any diplomats who came to visit North Korea, like real diplomats, and had children that looked like foreigners, Kim Jong-il would be like, can I borrow your kid for an hour? What does that mean? And they would be brought to the movie set for like a day, and they would be forced to change into like a thousand different wigs and costumes and play the evil foreigner villain. What? Yeah, there's no foreigners because North Korea is completely homogenous. Yeah, yeah. So they will take...

A diplomat's kids? Yeah. And filmed them in a movie? Yeah. And I guess the diplomat didn't care because it's not like movies are coming out of North Korea. Wow. And I guess it's also how do you say no to Kim Jong Il, right? Okay. Yeah.

South Korea, Japan, America always had to be depicted in rain at nighttime. No sunshine allowed. I mean, side note, they also only had one street for each country. So any scene in South Korea, regardless of time or context, was filmed on the same street every single time. All the characters from those countries had to have disabilities. Yeah.

Yeah. Yet, citizens of North Korea were told that the film industry in their country was quickly becoming the most advanced in the entire world. And because they didn't have access to any foreign films to compare them to, they loved it. They agreed.

This was world class. Kim knew it's very easy to convince his people though. But what about the rest of the world? They all laughed at his movies. And regardless of how much he hates the West and he really, really thinks they're evil, he just wants their approval. That's why he kidnapped actress Eun-hee and director Shin to make better movies. Like their life depended on it. Because, you know, it did. So he wants to make a movie and release it to the world. Yes. Yes.

Is this still about the same type of concept or is it trying to be more? Now he wants to just create the best movies. He wants to create American level movies, but he doesn't know how. He does want some elements of propaganda. He wants to show North Korea in a good light in all the movies, but it doesn't have to be as propaganda as the ones he's currently making because it's not just for his people. It,

They were in a very strong battle for soft power and exports. North Korea and South Korea were in one of the longest export battles. And one of it is culture. Exporting culture is an economy, honestly. Now, Shin and Euni had earned Kim's trust. And their plans were to make the best movies that they could. Not even for Kim, but honestly for the North Korean people.

So this is when they're reunited, you're saying? Yeah, after they're reunited, they're like forced to watch these North Korean movies. And Kim is finally telling them, this is why I brought you here, because you're going to make me movies. Now, you love North Korea. I love North Korea. Let's make some movies. I'm going to give you a crazy budget every year. Do what you want. All the while, these two are planning their escape.

And the first step of escape is insurance. They need proof that they were kidnapped and did not willingly defect to North Korea, which sounds crazy in 2024 that someone would willingly defect to North Korea. But it just happened recently when we talked about the auto case. Remember? Well,

A U.S. soldier ran through the DMZ line to North Korea recently in 2023. But back then, it was even more believable. People were still kind of deciding which side they wanted to be on, like which side of South or North Korea. And this is when tensions were even higher because North and South Korea, for any South Korean to have unsupervised contact with a North Korean citizen, even if that citizen was their own brother or sister or mother, it didn't matter. It would be considered treason, which is one of the highest punishable crimes ever.

Even if these two escaped North Korea, they could be trading one prison for another. They might get arrested for treason in South Korea and thrown in jail for the rest of their lives. They might not be believed. So they needed proof. Absolute, irrefutable proof. Kim Jong-il was 41 years old and considered the heir apparent. And the North Korean public had not even heard his voice yet. No intelligence agency in the entire world had heard Kim's voice.

If director Shin and Eun-hee wanted asylum anywhere in the world, they needed something everyone wanted. Recordings of Kim's voice. Because that would be wanted by the CIA, the feds, the CIA of South Korea. Everyone who had the political power to grant asylum and safety would do anything for those tapes. That was their insurance plan. They were going to get the first ever audio recording of Kim Jong-il's voice and expose the hermit kingdom to the rest of the world.

the ruler of the paranoid nation. Now, just to give you some context of how dangerous their plan is, Kim kept paranoia alive in his country, but he was equally as paranoid. It's alleged that he had tunnels running under the entire country that doubled as bomb shelters, and that's how he liked to travel the most. His bulletproof train was a gift from Joseph Stalin himself. He would avoid American spy satellites. That's what he said he was doing. He was not someone who liked to be tracked, watched, or listened to.

So they couldn't rush this. They had the tape recorder from all their filming gear that they were given to start making some movies, and they took the time to rehearse. Like they would rehearse their movie lines. Treat it like a movie. We're just acting, right? Don't let the nerves get to you.

They trained day after day to perfect their body movements. Okay, sit down at the dinner table. Euni would reach into her crossbody bag for the lipstick and click, the tape recorder would be running. She would place the bag on her lap away from his view, but not too far or too closed that his voice would be muffled. It was a game where the stakes were as high as they get.

It's life or death. There's no in between. There are no rewards in North Korea, only punishments. So if a family member defects or dies by suicide, the entire family gets thrown into a concentration camp. If you rescue your children in a house fire and let your Kim family portrait burn, concentration camp. If you don't mourn the death of any of the Kims enough, concentration camp. If you

fall asleep at a meeting where any of the Kims are present death if you read any Western novel in North Korea death if you watch a K-drama death

One of North Korea's biggest actresses at the time was a woman named Woo Eun-hee. We're going to call her Wendy. Now, Wendy was known as the people's actress. Everybody loved her. Every film she was in, Kim Jong-il had a hand in and the public ate it up. She was married to another director that worked on the movies. And the only problem was Wendy was a hopeless romantic and she had...

some pretty dangerous affairs. She just seemed awfully lonely, you know, and clearly her husband is just not helping with that feeling. So she just keeps looking for some sort of connection or bond with other people. And they would convince her that it's love and they would sleep with her and then they would walk away. So she had all these affairs and it was it was okay in the beginning, right? But one affair would end her life, an affair with a Korean man from Japan.

This man's dad was a very wealthy funder of the Kim regime for years. She was just very an easy and quick person to fall in love. And in a country where even holding hands publicly is highly frowned upon, one affair would lead to the end of her life. An affair with a Korean man from Japan.

His dad is a very wealthy Japanese businessman. He funded the Kim regime for years now. And his son was being sent to North Korea to work. And he falls in love with Wendy. He starts relentlessly pursuing her. He does not give up. And for a while, Wendy's fighting back. She doesn't want it. But he's also charismatic and caring. And he's seen the world. I mean, what could they do?

They couldn't get intimate at each other's homes or at hotels because hotels check permits. There was nothing. The only option was his Mercedes. So they drove it out to the park and in the dark, they were intimate. They had the engine running, the windows closed. It's winter time. They fall asleep in each other's arms. The next morning, the wealthy businessman's son was found dead in the car from carbon monoxide poisoning. Wendy was also in the car, unconscious, but still alive.

She was rushed to the hospital, she was saved, she had a husband and children, and the affair with the Japanese businessman's son not only complicated things for the Kims, because he was a huge funder of the Kim dynasty, but it just, it was a very messy public situation. And worse than that, Wendy had another man on the side. Kim Jong Il. She had cheated on Kim Jong Il, and he was not one to let it slide.

After Wendy fully recovered from the hospital, all of her friends and family were driven to a shooting range with a stadium. It was packed with 5,000 people and they were told, just you wait, it's going to be a big show. They waited in silence until they saw a woman wearing a prisoner's outfit, which side note, it's rumored that these outfits in North Korea are designed with theatrics in mind. Meaning if someone starts bleeding in one of these prison costumes or these uniforms, the blood soaks and spreads across the fabric faster.

making it very visually intense. Anyway, a woman is pulled out with a bag over her head and she's tied to a wooden pole in the center of the stadium. So the stadium right now is filled with people? 5,000 people. Okay. There are ropes around her chest, ropes around her knees. The bag is taken off her head and there's Wendy screaming for help. When her husband and friends and children realize it's her, they start screaming in the crowd.

And almost as quickly as it registered, the firing squad fire a single shot to her chest. The bullet rips through the rope, unleashing the top half of her body, and it causes all of her weight to lunge forward as if she's bowing to an audience. Then the next bullet goes straight to her head. It was wintertime, and a defector once said that you see a lot of steam coming from point-blank executions of the head during the wintertime. So there was a lot of steam.

Then one more shot is given to the legs to break the ropes holding the lower half of Wendy's body and she will fall to the floor of the podium. The guards will put her in a bag, take her into the mountains and let the wild animals rip her apart. And three lucky children after this, the stadium doors open and the children run in and only three lucky children will get to run out with the bullet casing because that's a souvenir. So they sent a bunch of kids in there and they're rushing to find the bullet casing. Yeah.

The ones that were used to kill Wendy. A woman that they had seen on the screen countless times. The people's actress. Kim Jung-il's mistress.

Someone very close to Kim described him as being, you know, he's somewhat likable. That's the thing. He has an ability or rather a talent at making people feel at ease when he wants to. When he's happy, Kim Jong-il would treat you so, so well. But when he's angry, he can make every window in the house shake. The contradictions in his personality can be so confusing and incomprehensible. He's romantic, yet extreme, harsh, and ultimately, he's very dangerous.

Even for actress Eun-hee, she said that sometimes he would treat her like an elder, with respect, like she was the master teaching him something about film. Other times, he would loudly talk about all the young actresses Eun-hee's ex-husband, director Shin, was rumored to have slept with while they were married. Another said he always craved power. He always organized everything in secret and executed his plan in secret because that's his specialty.

Even with his dad, when his dad was in charge, the films made it seem like he was this subservient son who is fully devoted and worshiping Kim Il-sung, his dad, right? But in reality, he was just scheming. He just wants to be the head. That's it. And he did this by dismantling his dad's entire inner circle.

circle. He would plant listening devices in all of his dad's closest official homes and offices. At first, he would try to buy them. He would listen to them talking about their favorite foreign cars, foreign women, whatever it was, he would buy it. And if they still didn't turn, then he would blackmail them. Or he would just Korean barbecue them. That's when people are strung up like a hog by their wrists and ankles and held over a bonfire until they agree to do something or they confess to doing something that they probably didn't even do.

He did this slowly to cut off all the tentacles of his dad's octopus until his dad was just left with him. His dad didn't even really see it. He felt like Kim was his son, the only one that he could trust. But Kim was smart. This, this is who Eun-hee and Shin are trying to outsmart. Kim Jong-il. In order to make good movies, Shin and Eun-hee told him they have to go to Europe. You know?

They're only allowed to go to the communist countries in Eastern Europe, but and with 20 guards at the time and connecting hotel rooms with those cards, but at least they're getting out of North Korea. Each time they pass by any sort of American embassy in Eastern Europe, Eunhee wanted to sprint. She wanted to make a run for it, but Shin would stop her. They need the perfect moment. And right now, surrounded by 15 guards is not the moment. Do you know how many other guards could be undercover right now watching us? We don't know. Okay. It's not time.

So for years, they went back and forth from Eastern Europe to North Korea, and they just kept making movies. They didn't even make movies for Kim. They did it for the North Korean people. Whatever they made, the people of North Korea would watch it. They loved it. This was their only source of entertainment, and their whole thing was to take the propaganda out of it. And they wanted to make the most basic movies that every other country has made a million times.

A movie about love between two people. Because North Korea didn't have that. They only had movies about love between the civilian and the kings, the dynasty. So they want to make a movie about just a regular love. And did they like that? Did Kim Jong-il like that? Yes, because he said, it's just like the European movies. We're getting closer to be internationally recognized. Hmm.

He only liked it because he wants to be internationally acclaimed for his films. They said that Kim would do anything for these movies. They were given $8.5 million a year for their movie filming budget, and that's not including all of the staff that they have at their disposal, because they can choose anyone from North Korea to work for them for free. Sky is the limit. Euni later joked, when we needed a fan to simulate wind, we reached out to Kim and he would send us a helicopter.

If we reached out to get fake snow, Kim would fly the entire crew to Mount Paektu where it was still snowing. One movie had a train explosion and director Shin was talking to Kim about it and said, yeah, if we could get this very specific special effects scale model to blow up. But Kim was like, why not just a real train to blow up? Much easier. Yeah. I got a bunch of those. The next day, a fully functioning train was delivered to Shin loaded with explosives.

They genuinely did get sucked back into movie making and they felt like there was a purpose. The couple's movies were the first time many North Korean civilians saw themselves as individuals. They would make a total of seven films, each one loved by North Korea. They're finally getting this escape. They have musicals, sci-fi movies, martial arts movies. Purgasari was their last film with North Korea and it's the North Korean version of Godzilla. I mean, there's still an uncertainty

an underlying undertone of propaganda and everything but it's an escape yeah yeah yeah are those even available anywhere do we know yeah i think so yeah really yeah it's yeah they loved it and they just made hit after hit and kim is so pleased i mean they're still failing to gain a strong international audience but that's gonna take time all that mattered was they're getting closer

And then the time came. A Japanese film critic and a friend of the couple was visiting Budapest at the same time that director Shin and Euni were filming in Budapest.

How did they find out? They still communicate with them because they're trying to get into these international film shows. So they have to talk to film credits. They have to talk to these award hosts and stuff. Highly monitored. Highly monitored. There's like a guard breathing down their neck right next to them with probably a gun pointed at them. The couple gave the excuse of wanting to meet up with him to try and get him to review their North Korean movies and try to get international attention, primarily in Japan. And the guards okayed it after they talked to Kim.

So the film critic was going to meet them in their hotel room. They opened the door to him. The guards are in the next room over with the connecting door.

Welcome, come in. They loudly make their pleasantries. Oh, it's been so long. So good to see you. So nice. How many years has it been? And they drag him to the corner of the hotel room and they start shoving a tape recorder and photos into his pockets. This is absolutely a secret between you and us. Please keep these things for six months. And if you don't hear from us again after that time, give everything to the Japanese and Korean news media. Go.

Their friend looked worried, but they didn't have the time or the luxury to explain everything in detail. It would be in those tapes. They hugged him goodbye and pushed him out the hotel room door. The tapes had recordings of Kim Jong-il talking about how he kidnapped them. Okay. And now they had six months to escape or else that would be all over the news. And if they don't escape, that means they will be dead. Yeah. That's so interesting. What does that six months do? I don't know. I guess they were scared.

Because they needed a timeline of when it needs to be released. I see, I see. Five months had passed since they saw the film critic in Budapest. And it was all over the news. Director Shin and actress Euni, both missing from Hong Kong, kidnapped by the North. Audio tapes were secretly sent to relatives in Seoul. And it's reported that under North Korean coercion, Shin and Euni are making movies to be presented to Kim Il-sung as a birthday gift. The film slanders the Republic of South Korea along with several other top officials.

Okay. Shin is staring at his guards. It's game over. They're gonna die. Every international news headline read, kidnapped by North Korea, abducted to North Korea, North Koreans operation against the South through films. Shin and Eun-hee waited for the call to be killed. Kim Jong-il would not keep them alive after this, no matter how well their movies are doing. And the phone rang. They're sweating. They pick it up. And it's Kim.

Take care of this. You need to handle it. Maybe you guys need to go to Eastern Europe more. Make sure everyone knows that you're not being held against your will. Convince them. Turns out, Kim Jong-il records every single one of his conversations. He was under the impression that someone on his side had leaked the tape.

Oh my god. And that Shin and Euni were fully on his side. Oh my god. Whether that's what he truly believed or it's just what he wanted to believe because he didn't want to know that he was betrayed by the people that he needed, it's unclear. But Shin and Euni would live to see another day.

Side note about these transcripts. He does have a very high pitched voice and he talks rapid fire fast, like he's just shooting out whatever's on his mind and then not really finishing his thought and then going on to the next one. And it's very high pitched. So there are speculations that he didn't have a leadership voice, which is why his father hid his voice for so long.

Could be a thing. I mean, there are people that say there is such a thing as presidential voices, but we do have a few clips. All the audio clips were not released. I believe they're held by the CIA. We have some transcripts, but it's fascinating. I mean, what kind of top secret is someone's voice going to do? I think maybe they can track him through his voice.

I don't know. I'm sure the CIA has a million things that they could do with his voice that we probably can't do with his voice. I'm not sure. Oh.

Yeah. So he talks very fast paced and he does in one clip briefly bring up South Korea. And he says, we're on a lower level to speak honestly. South Koreans try very hard to get things done. Here, people are different. Things are given to them. North Korean actors aren't improving. They have no acting skills at all. Hard work is the key to success. It's difficult to talk about this. I mean, we have to admit that we're falling behind. We have to acknowledge that we're behind. I'm in the position to say it.

If others say it, they will be in trouble for criticizing the system. I'm the only one who can say this. And I can tell only two of you. There is nothing challenging when a film is made here. The crew don't try a single new thing. They can improve. They repeat scenes that we've already made.

He also tries to convince them that if they talk to outsiders, they should tell them that they like it here. Say that there's no freedom in the South, no democracy, that it's only anti-communism. You came here to find real freedom. That's what you should be saying. Freedom of expression. We want our film industry to become even more advanced than that of advanced countries. I think that would sound good, natural. Well, better than saying that you were forcefully dragged here, right? This was the clip. Yeah.

After all that, Shin and Eun-hee put on a show trying to convince the world that they were not forcibly brought to North Korea. They spoke about how much money there is in the film industry there, how much support they've been getting, how little censorship that they face. They became publicly regarded as traitors by the world. But that's what it took to stay alive. Nobody questioned it. They were forced to say these things, but nobody questioned it. And a lot of it has to do with Eun-hee's past.

So the actress, there were rumors that Eun-hee always wanted to defect to the North because she, during the Korean War, was forced to sleep with North soldiers, is the allegation. She did work as an entertainer of the Northern camps. We don't know if she was forced to sleep with them, right?

Rumors were brutal. And then she moved over to the south, fled to the south, and then she was placed into the southern armies. And then there were rumors that she cozied up to a high-ranking American general and became his mistress. Everyone said she's always been a flip-flopper. So of course she would defect to the north. Every bad thing about the couple started resurfacing. Like the fact that Euni was... At first, she married a very famous cameraman. And she was 20 years old. He was 41 years old.

Yeah. And during the war, he was enlisted to fight. He became injured, disabled, and then she left him for a younger, hotter, more successful director. Shin left him high and dry. And of course, a person like that would defect to the North. Nobody cared for any of the other details, like the fact that her former husband, cameraman, would be in our word her regularly, that she was constantly covered in blood and welts while expecting her to keep the house work 20 hours a day to make money.

Or the fact that if she did have intimate relations with any soldier or general from any side of the war, it was our word because she never consented to it. She was an A-list actress at this point, but she would take on back-to-back plays, sleeping just an hour a night every single night. This is after the war, right? And she's already made it, but she has no money. Her husband just blows all her money and she's sleep deprived, doing nothing. One day she's on stage, midway through the play, she dramatically faints.

Not in the script. The other actors are shocked. They don't know what to do. They're confused. Director Shin was in the audience and he jumped up from his seat onto the stage, picked her up and ran all the way to the nearest hospital. Eun-hee said he had a beautiful smile and he looked like he had no concerns or difficulties in life. And he looked at her and he said, do you want to star in my movie?

It's interesting because it's hard to say if they love each other more or if they love each other's movie making abilities more. Both were genuinely obsessed with the craft of movies. I think neither of them gave a flying fork about the fame. So together, they go on, they marry, they go on to create Shin Films, which is a big freaking deal. It was the only film studio in all of South Korea. The winning formula was director Shin would produce and direct a film that his wife Euni would star in.

The first few movies were, yeah, okay, they were met with skepticism because they were known as like a morally corrupt couple at the time, but she was just so good.

It was undeniable. It was an elevated form of a movie. People hated them, but would still go watch their movies because it's a good movie. And then slowly they kept watching more and more. And then the hatred just went away. And the audiences are just eating it up to the point where this couple, they're the power couple. They're being invited to the Blue House to rub shoulders with the then president slash dictator at the time. It was a lot.

And director Shin made the biggest budget films and he paid his wife Euni with the largest fees ever paid to a Korean actress. And everything Shin Films created, Euni was an equal partner. Like they were ahead of their time. Director Shin would tell Euni every day, any film I make, I want you to be in it.

And Eun-hee said, "That is how he said I love you." Side note, Eun-hee was unable to conceive and she did adopt two kids, a son and a baby girl, and she really loved being a mom. Shin said about his wife, "It was my destiny to meet her."

And it's kind of hard to pinpoint where Shin film self-destructed. It could have been when director Shin cheated on his wife. I mean, that was kind of the beginning point of the decline. It could have also been when the president or dictator of South Korea started becoming a very strong enthusiast of censorship. But Shin film was on the decline. I will say the censorship in South Korea got really wild. It got to the point where if a character in a movie even complained a bit too passionately about the weather, like, ah, the weather sucks, right?

They would censor the movie, claiming the movie promoted antisocial behavior. Director Shin didn't like any of that, okay? So he just kept making movies that he liked. He didn't listen. And adding to that problem is that Director Shin is an all-in kind of guy. If he had a new movie in mind, he would spend the entire company's yearly budget and payroll on this new movie without even thinking about the risk. He's like, well, it's going to work out. And most of the time, it did. Until it didn't.

They were always on the verge of filing for bankruptcy. They're like one toilet paper roll being used too quickly away from losing it all. But ultimately, a three-second kiss would be his undoing. In his new movie, he had a couple making out and the woman was topless in that scene. The government ordered, absolutely not, that needs to be taken out. But he kept it in.

He violated public moral codes and he was stripped of his movie making license. He was ruined for life. He ruined his life. And this time he had ruined Euni's life too. This time Shin's promising while they're being held captive by North Korea making movies, I'm not going to let it happen again, Euni. I'm not going to ruin your life. I'm going to get you out of here. And the perfect chance came in Vienna.

They're trying to get their version of Godzilla, Purgasari, to be accepted into Western film festivals. So they're running around Vienna and they had already spotted the American embassy earlier that trip. And they're ready to leave at any given time as long as they find the perfect chance. So they do it.

They told the guards that they're meeting with a Japanese film director and they're going to meet him in front of the hotel. The guards are waiting in the lobby. They're like looking out the window, making sure everything's OK. The Japanese film director gets out of the taxi and instead of closing the door, the two shove him back into the taxi, get in, lock the doors and they scream at the taxi to take them to the American embassy.

That's crazy. They were in that taxi for five minutes. It felt like five hours. When the taxi turned the corner and the embassy was finally in view, they slammed open the door, started making a run for it. Euni said they're running as fast as they can, but it feels like a slow motion scene in a movie. She said that's all she could think about. This feels like slow motion. This feels like slow motion. When they finally reached the embassy door. It's locked. They shove each other out the way to get inside first.

Oh my god. But they both made it before the North Koreans could get to them. And they had done it. They were finally free. And they had a bag full of tapes to share with the CIA and a very wild story. The CIA informed the couple that they had to go into witness protection for a while because Kim allegedly put a hit on their heads. In exchange for telling the CIA everything that they know about their time in North Korea, the couple were granted citizenship and asylum in the United States. Are they still alive? They both passed.

Wow, what a life. Yeah. Even in America, Shin still tried his hand at films. He signed a deal with Disney, but the movies performed horrendously and it just didn't go well. Yeah. And they never felt at home. They never made money. They were living in pretty much poverty in America. They moved back to South Korea where again, they were living pretty much in poverty. And even in South Korea, some people don't even believe that they were truly kidnapped.

Some people think they defected and then they didn't like it and then they changed their minds. But Euni shakes her head and says, the most important thing to me is for people to finally accept that the truth is the truth. That's my last wish.

Kim Il-sung, the founder of North Korea, died. There were reports of citizens of North Korea fleeing themselves off the rooftops to join their leader, but also reports of entire families and generations of families being arrested and killed, shot on sight because they were not, quote, showing genuine displays of grief during his funeral.

In early 2011, director Shin passed away. He was remarried to Choi Eun-hee when he passed and it destroyed her when he died. She said, when we first divorced, I could still hate him and miss him. But at least I knew he was out there living in the world somewhere. But now he's gone and there's nothing left. Death is a very cruel thing.

Later that year, Kim Jong-il died, and his son Kim Jong-un would take over as the supreme leader of North Korea. And in 2017, Kim Jong-nam, Kim Jong-il's first son and Kim Jong-un's half-brother, would be killed by two girls who thought they were filming a YouTube prank video that I will link below. And in 2018, Choi Eun-hee, the actress, passed away.

And now, foreign movies are considered one of the biggest threats to North Korea. The smuggling of foreign movies is a huge network. And at one point, one of the top movies smuggled in was Skyfall, James Bond. Another one was Desperate Housewives. And a North Korean defector said after watching that, people were confused. They always thought Americans were these war-loving, violent criminals. But they're just having affairs and living their lives. Desperate Housewives?

Do you know what that was about? We saw it with Eva Longoria, I think. Oh, I think so. Okay, okay, okay. So it's a very goofy. Yeah, it's like a very goofy domestic. And more recently, Squid Game was smuggled in. One North Korean citizen told a black market smuggler that a lot of him and his friends watched it and they felt a lot of parallel in their own lives. They could relate to the show. And that was opening up their eyes to what kind of country they live in.

And that is the story of the actress and the director that Kim Jong-il kidnapped to make movies for North Korea. What are your thoughts on this case? I mean, it's so bizarre, honestly. But also, I'm so freaked out by my search history for this one. I'm worried about your safety. Yeah. But let me know your thoughts in the comments. Please stay safe. And I'll see you guys on Sunday for the next one. Bye.