Rotten Mango - #340: A-List Movie Star KIDNAPPED By North Korea- then Forced To Make Movies For Kim Jung Il
Episode Date: February 29, 2024Eunhee was an A list actress and had always had star treatment but this was a whole new level. She had a guarded mansion and millions of dollars at her disposal. Every evening, platters of shrimp, lob...ster, sushi, delicacies shipped in from all over the world filled an entire banquet table. It was all just for her. Every morning, a new gift was delivered for her downstairs, a fur coat, lacy lingerie, or beautiful gowns. She added them to the closet in ‘her’ bedroom already stuffed to the brim. Every single piece was perfectly tailored to fit her body; her exact measurements all the way down to her undergarments. She had guards watching her every move and tending to her every need. The one condition was that - she couldn’t leave… unless he called. A week into her stay - her assistant burst in through the door excited to get her ready. He had invited her to a party and she needed to look perfect. She got all dolled up and was led down to the front where she was face to face with the man who kidnapped her. The Supreme Leader of North Korea. Kim Jong Il. Full Source Notes: rottenmangopodcast.com To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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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-wire defenses, 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 a very much bespoke
tailor 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. It 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! You've been invited! 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 Tong-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,
kidnap her? Why would Kim Jong-il want to kidnap her? Why would the son of the supreme leader of North Korea's
North Korea's son of the Korean leader of the era of North Korea's parents kidnap his 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.
Eunhee, 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 Jung 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
Jung-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? Euni 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 Euni hit rock bottom because she felt her husband went and found the two
things that Euni 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 Eun-hee 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. 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 Eunhee 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 non-stop.
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 gonna 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 gate
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, 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 victim's faces would be completely gone,
nothing would be left of their clothes,
but just some like bloody strings.
Forced 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 7-8 months pregnant.
Basically about to give birth.
So it would be, you would think,
and 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,
from the moment you put down your spoon, you're hungry.
It's all grass, no nutrition, you get hungry.
You don't even feel the food in your stomach.
All the nutrition in your body is gone,
so you end up looking like a skeleton
just right before dying. Another former prisoner said,
it's in my opinion that it's preferable to be beaten in prison. You know, because it's possible
to grate your teeth and withstand a physical beating, but to continuously be starved is worse.
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.
Sight 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 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 in the next morning,
the person next to you is cold, because they're dead.
The older women die 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 you, 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 at 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 gonna 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, a turned defector said, we were not supposed to move
when we sleep. We have to sit crisscross sauce, and we have to look down and our back straight head hanging down. That's
how we're allowed to sleep. No one's allowed to move, so all you hear is the
sound of people breathing. 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, Eun-hee, 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 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 many,
how long time for two and a half years?
Every single day, every single day.
Wow.
There is a real life hunger games and it's called the mass 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 mass games is actually a tourist event.
All you have to do is purchase a ticket.
Some international sponsors of these games
are gonna 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 news 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 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 point two 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 jumbo tron.
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 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've trained 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 citizen 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's 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 Royce, 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?
Like he could just travel around North Korea.
In his private.
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 dollars building homes across the country for himself.
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 gonna 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 or the 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.
And 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 have 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 girls 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 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 new season come out?
Yeah, I think cause they imported it from Europe and maybe.
Now, 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 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
in traffic 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,
floating, 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 the 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 and 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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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 were 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.
Send in a 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, no, like actors. No one's
having fun. I see. Sometimes in the middle of dinner, he would scream army. Everyone
would stop mid shoe eyes go wide food hanging out of their mouth, they would reach under
their seats, rushed 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, 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 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.
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 Jung-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 it 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 lights, 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 Seongbun classes. The lowest Hongbuns 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 is someone who is not a prisoner. Prisoners can get as
low as 5 ounces a day. Just to give you some context, we probably eat anywhere between
48-64 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 three 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 gonna be about,
so we're just gonna call him Kim. But he's not actually the current 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-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 Kims.
Allegedly, North Korea is a huge, huge producer of counterfeit items, including counterfeit
cigarettes, medicine, including fake Vi 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 US $100 bill.
And the $100 bills, by the way, they're called supernotes 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 8 weeks
old.
And at just 3 years old, it's stated, legend has it, Kim Jung 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 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 didn't 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-un 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 cinema holic,
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 or?
Behind Daddy's back. But what about the 250 employees working in the entire world. But is that behind Daddy's back or? 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?
Yeah.
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.
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.
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.
By special eye, I mean, he just liked watching them, like the rest of us.
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 Pratigé, 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 movie making department was probably the best job that you could ever
get.
He created a department store for film workers
where they could buy clothes
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.
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? 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 Jung-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 issues.
So you get it as a gift from the government.
Now, there are barely any cars on the road
at any given time.
So Hedda, let's call her Hedi,
so Hedi 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 an order.
She grabs a jacket, runs into the back seat,
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 gonna take you to the hospital.
Your sister is about to give birth to my very first child.
What?
Actress Song Hyerim, not to be confused with her sister, Hedam, was pregnant with Kim's
very first child.
Kim dropped the actress' sister off at the hospital so she wouldn't be alone to give
birth, but 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 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 gonna 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 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 that 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 docus dramas.
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?
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.
Twenty 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.
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.
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. There's this
angry storm raging just calming down on them relentless But the minute that Kim Jong-il is born the thunderstorm stops abruptly a double rainbow appears right in front of the cabin
And it's so bright the colors of this double rainbow are so intense
It looks like the lucky charms packaging and a new star appears in the sky that very day to celebrate
This is the same thing as like those old school Chinese
legend.
Yeah.
The sky clears up.
Exactly.
The baby was so healthy that when Kim Jong-un 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 Shen and actress Euni 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 whisked through decades of storms just crashing down on the harsh mountain side.
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 actor Suni 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 like hedonistic joy.
They also showed pictures of Americans surrendering to North Korea, hanging white flags out their
windows because Kim Ye-sung was such a great battler. He won the war against the Americans.
And yet there were also framed New York Times articles that praise the Kim family.
Side note, you know how you can get those gag gifts of fake newspaper articles?
Those were the ones on the wall in the museums of North Korea.
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 and hundreds of battles,
leaders who refused to kneel before the US imperialist,
light of our people, et cetera, et. 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.
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 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
wreaks 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-un feels like both of them, Eun-hee and Shin, have separately been fully
indoctrinated, it was time to reunite them, after years of being in North Korea separated.
Ini 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 Inee,
grabs her elbow and says,
"'Today will be the happiest day of your life.'"
Inee's looking like,
I highly doubt it, okay?
Cause 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, the special guest is here,
look who it is.
Inee slowly lifts her head, thinking it's another some sort of general who are 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 Director Shin. And it looked like his soul had been ripped out of him.
And for a moment, Euni 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
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
Jung-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 Euni 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. Oh. They both sit back down at the tables.
Euni watches Shin as director Shin laughs and jokes
about movies with Kim.
Shin crinkles his eyebrow and watches Euni
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 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 Ine 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's just silence.
And then Shin looks at Indie. 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 and 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 Euni 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 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 all right, Euni.
Did Euni know that she was being kidnapped by North Korea?
Euni would later say,
Yes, the Wage Man knew her name.
How do you guys know my name?
Because we're Joseon.
Huge context here.
In South Korea, we call ourselves like,
Korean person, like,
Korean, right?
Which is a Korean person,
but in North Korea, they call themselves Joseon.
Joseon Jun.
Chao Xian, yes. Yes, it was like, Old. Joseonjun. Chao-sian, yes.
Yes, it was like olden day.
Yeah.
That's what Korea was called before.
Yes, but now it's like a Korean person, 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.
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 Eunni 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.
Shin, 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 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 Euni,
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 through 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 and a half 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 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.
Imjin 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 was they doing? Again, they were filming movies, no? Not yet, they're being be looking for me. They won't expect it. But like 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 were 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.
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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 Eunhee.
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 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?
There's no foreigners because North Korea is completely homogenous.
Yeah, yeah, so they would take a diplomat kids. Yeah and film them in the 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
Yeah, it's South Korea Japan America always had to be depicted in rain at night time, 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 Euni and director Shin to make better movies like their life depended on it
because you know it did
So he wants to make movie and release it to the world. Yes
Is this still about the same type of concept or is it trying to be more?
No, 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.
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.
Okay.
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 gonna make me movies now you love North Korea. I love North Korea. Let's make some movies
I'm gonna give you a crazy budget me movies. Now you love North Korea, I love North Korea, let's make some movies,
I'm gonna 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, uh-huh a US 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 k, 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.
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 Directors Shin and Eunhee 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-un'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-in-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 aided 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 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. 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 wintertime. 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. 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 the stadium.
It was packed with 5,000 people and they were told,
just you wait, it's gonna 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 is 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 winter time and a defector once said
that you see a lot of steam coming from point blank
executions of the head during the winter time.
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 send a bunch of kids in there and they're rushing to find the bullet.
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-eul'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 Jung-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 Euni'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 a 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.
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 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,
and you wanted to sprint, she wanted to make a run for it, but she 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 the kings the dynasty
and the kings, the dynasty. So they want to make movie about just a regular love.
And do they like that?
Do Kim Jong-il like that?
Yes, because he said it's just like the European movies.
We're getting closer to be internationally recognized.
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 Pectu
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?
It's 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 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.
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 film
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 gonna 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,
how it's been so long. So good to see you. So nice to see you. 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 month do? I?
Don't know. I guess they were scared
Hmm because they needed a timeline of of when it needs to be released.
Five months had passed since they saw the film critic in Budapest.
And it was all over the news.
Directors 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
Korean's operation against the South through films.
Shin and Euni 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 Eun-hee 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 lot
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.
Track him?
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, okay. with his voice that we probably can't do with his voice, I'm not sure. Yeah. So he, 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't 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.
After all that, Shin and Eune 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.
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 beat and outward 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 arward 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.
Euni 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 Euni said, that is how he said, I love you.
Side note, Euni 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 filmed 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, 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 gonna work out.
And most of the time it did 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 as 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 gonna let it happen again,
Euni. I'm not gonna ruin your life. I'm gonna 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 gonna 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 okay. The
Japanese film director gets out of the taxi and instead of closing the door,
the two shove him back into the taxi 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. 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.
Is 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 in 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 or?
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 In-hee 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 Choyeon 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 Housewife?
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 Jung-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 so. I'm worried about your safety. Yeah but
let me know your thoughts in the comments please stay safe and I will see
you guys on Sunday for the next one. Bye!