A South Korean actress who was once kidnapped by the North’s agents on the orders of former North Korean leader Kim Jong-il in a Cold War-style intrigue and forced to make movies for the regime has died at age 91, her family said.
Choi Eun-hee was the South’s most famous actress for decades before being brazenly abducted by North Korean spies in Hong Kong in 1978 at the request of then-leader-in-waiting Kim, an avid film fan.
Her husband, Shin Sang-ok, a top film director, was taken to the North soon after, although the circumstances surrounding his abduction remain unclear.
Choi remained trapped in the North for eight years, where she and Shin made more than 10 films together under Kim’s watch.
Choi in a 2011 interview described a complex relationship with a captor who “respected us as artists and fully supported us,” but whom she could never forgive for the “outrageous and unforgivable” kidnapping.
They were allowed to make “films with artistic values, instead of just propaganda films extolling the regime,” Choi said, but always longed for their freedom.
Kim spared no expense when it came to making their movies. For one action sequence involving a train crash he provided a real train engine loaded with dynamite, while for another film requiring windy conditions he ordered a helicopter to hover overhead.
During their ordeal, the couple traveled overseas extensively for movie production and to attend film festivals — always under heavy surveillance by the North’s agents.
The couple — who had divorced in 1976 — remarried during a trip to Hungary at Kim’s urging.
They finally staged a daring escape to the US embassy in Vienna after attending the Berlin International Film Festival in 1986.
“I still have nightmares of being chased after by North Korean agents,” she said in a 2015 interview.
“When I arrived at the US embassy in Austria and was told: ‘Welcome to the West,’ I burst into tears. I couldn’t stop crying,” she added.
The couple sought asylum in the US due to fears for their personal security, before returning to the South in 1999 after more than a decade in the US.
They remained married until Shin’s death in 2006. Their dramatic life inspired several books and movies.
Choi’s funeral is to be held in Seoul tomorrow.
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of ￡0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
For two decades, researchers observed members of the Ngogo chimpanzee group of Kibale National Park in Uganda spend their days eating fruits and leaves, resting, traveling and grooming in their tropical rainforest abode, but this stable community then fractured and descended into years of deadly violence. The researchers are now describing the first clearly documented example of a group of wild chimpanzees splitting into two separate factions, with one launching a series of coordinated attacks against the other. Adult males and infants were targeted, with 28 deaths. “Biting, pounding the victim with their hands, dragging them, kicking them — mostly adult males,
The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims. The demolitions came after Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz called for the destruction of
SUPERFAN: The Japanese PM played keyboard in a Deep Purple tribute band in middle school and then switched to drums at university, she told the British rock band Legendary British rock band Deep Purple yesterday made Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s day with a brief visit to their high-profile superfan as they returned to the nation they first toured more than half a century ago. Takaichi’s reputation as an amateur drummer, and a fan of hard rock and heavy metal has been well documented, and she has referred to Deep Purple as one of her favorite bands along with the likes of Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden. “You are my god,” a giddy Takaichi said in English to Deep Purple drummer Ian Paice, presenting him with a set of made-in-Japan
RSS