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South Korea was at that time a dictatorship under General Park Chung-
Magnus Bärtås
hee. The censorship rules within the South Korean film industry were very strict, even though General Park himself was an enormous film fan.
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In 1961, he had fallen in love with Shin Sang-ok’s melodrama called
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Sangnoksu (The Evergreen Tree), a film that he came to regard as the cinematic national anthem of South Korea. Choi Eun-hee played the main role of the young self-sacrificing teacher at a village school. General Park was so eager to see Shin and Choi’s films that he ordered that newly developed reels be brought directly to the presidential palace. The couple became guests of the dictator, who enjoyed playing cards with Shin. But the card games with the dictator came to an abrupt end in 1975 when Park got the idea that the South Korean film director was conspiring against him and Shin was banned from his profession. Shin Films was closed and the staff was dismissed. Around the same time, Shin and Choi divorced. In 1978, Madame Choi traveled to Hong Kong on business. On her way to a meeting, she was attacked; a sack was pulled over her head and she was taken to the harbor where she was placed on board a little boat and injected with sedatives. After eight days, the boat docked at the North Korean harbor of Nampo. Waiting for her on the dock was a short man with a strange haircut. He greeted her with a smile: “Thank you for being here, Madame Choi. I am Kim Jong Il.” Shortly after her arrival, Madame Choi was dressed in traditional Korean clothes and photographed. Kim Jong Il proudly displayed the pictures to his father, Kim Il Sung, at the time the dictator of North Korea. Thereafter, Madame was invited to the Friday parties at Kim Jong Il’s personal palace, where she was expected to appear as if stepping out of one of her films. The parties would always include a film screening, followed by backgammon and mahjong, punctuated by enormous glasses of cognac. There was dancing to an all-female combo band, which played jazz and disco. In the small hours of the morning, Kim Jong Il would get on stage and direct the band. Kim Jong Il had an enormous archive of 35mm films, probably over 15,000, and was eager to discuss film with Madame Choi. He could not emphasize enough the importance of film as a propagator of national identity and community. The archive was only accessible to the “royal family,” but Kim considered Madame Choi as part of the family. He seemed to forget that she was there by force. Five years went by. During the last three years, Madame had fallen out of favor and was no longer invited to the Friday parties at the palace. Then on 6 March 1983 an invitation arrived to a huge banquet. Madame Choi was seated as the guest of honor and Kim Jong Il was unusually excited. He made a speech in which he appointed her to be the mother of North Korea, the mother of Chosun. He talked about how Korea consists of one people, with the same history and the same culture. And then the unbelievable happened: surrounded by dignitaries, Shin Sang-ok arrived. Dumbfounded, Choi stared at his emaciated face. Finally Kim Jong Il exclaimed, “Why are you just standing there? Go ahead, hug each other.” It turned out that soon after Madame’s capture, Shin himself had been kidnapped. A failed attempt to escape his kidnappers landed him in a forced-labor camp, where for four years he survived by eating salt, grass, and bark. Now, Kim Jong Il wanted to crown them king and queen of the
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