Kim Jong Il kidnapped South Korean director Shin Sang-ok and forced him to make Pulgasari, North Korea’s answer to Godzilla, before a daring escape.
The strangest thing about Pulgasari is not its rubber monster, its appetite for farm equipment or the North Korean army marching past miniature castles. It is that the man behind the camera had been kidnapped, imprisoned and then handed a state-funded studio by Kim Jong Il. Director Shin Sang-ok received the kind of resources filmmakers dream about. The only thing missing from his contract was the right to leave.
The Actress Disappeared First
In January 1978, South Korean actress Choi Eun-hee traveled to Hong Kong for what appeared to be a legitimate film opportunity. Instead, North Korean agents abducted her near Repulse Bay, forced her aboard a ship and took her to North Korea. Kim Jong Il personally welcomed his unwilling new star.
Shin, Choi’s ex-husband and longtime creative partner, began searching for her. He disappeared in Hong Kong six months later. North Korea had just acquired two of South Korea’s biggest cinematic names without paying a licensing fee.
The pair received very different introductions to their new workplace. Choi was confined in a guarded villa, taken to performances and subjected to lessons about the ruling Kim family. Shin repeatedly tried to escape. His punishment was years inside Prison No. 6, surviving on miserable rations and relentless ideological training.
Kim reunited them at a party in 1983. Cameras flashed and guests applauded as the former couple embraced, turning the end of their separation into another piece of state-managed theater. Only then did Kim explain the assignment: North Korean cinema had become repetitive, lifeless and embarrassing. He wanted films capable of winning international awards, and kidnapping better filmmakers had apparently seemed easier than developing them.
Choi and Shin pretended to accept. Privately, they began recording their conversations with Kim. On one tape, he openly discussed the abductions and instructed them to claim they had entered North Korea voluntarily. If they ever escaped, those recordings would keep their unbelievable story from sounding like an elaborate excuse.
Building a Monster for the Regime
Cooperation bought them a peculiar form of freedom. Shin was allowed to establish a studio, command enormous budgets and even travel abroad—with handlers always close behind. He directed seven films for the regime, while Choi won Best Actress at the Moscow International Film Festival for Salt. Their studio door had reopened; the country’s border remained locked.
Kim’s trophy project was Pulgasari, a kaiju movie assembled from Korean folklore and unmistakable Godzilla envy. A dying blacksmith creates a tiny creature from rice, which his daughter accidentally brings to life with her blood. Pulgasari eats iron, grows into a horned giant and helps starving peasants overthrow a vicious king.
Kim spared little expense. Thousands of soldiers became extras, elaborate miniature sets were constructed, and Japanese special-effects veterans from Toho were brought into North Korea. Kenpachiro Satsuma, the performer who had recently worn the Godzilla suit in The Return of Godzilla, climbed inside Pulgasari. Even Kim’s imitation came with the authentic man in the rubber costume.
Yet the movie’s politics slip free of their owner. After defeating the monarchy, Pulgasari cannot stop eating. It begins devouring the farmers’ tools, threatening the same people it supposedly liberated. A revolution creates a savior; the savior wins; then it consumes everyone who fed it. Whether Shin planted that message or the film simply escaped Kim’s control, its monster looks suspiciously like a dictator with an endless appetite.
The Only Ending Kim Did Not Approve
Making Pulgasari did not free Shin and Choi. Earning Kim’s trust did. In March 1986, they traveled to Vienna seeking financial backing for a planned Genghis Khan epic. At the InterContinental Hotel, they slipped away from their North Korean minders, jumped into a taxi and raced to the United States Embassy.
The recordings helped prove that they were captives, not willing defectors, after North Korea claimed they had entered the country voluntarily. Kim’s regime buried Pulgasari and removed Shin’s name after the escape, but the film eventually resurfaced abroad and became a cult curiosity.
Kim Jong Il wanted cinema powerful enough to make the world believe North Korea’s stories. Instead, his most famous production preserved the one story he needed buried: two kidnapped artists smiling for the cameras, making his movies and waiting for the moment his guards looked away.