★ 04/27/2015
Actor Park, a cast member of the sketch comedy show In Living Color during the early 1990s, brings his considerable talent to the audio edition of Fischer’s book. Fischer recounts the kidnapping of the South Korean film director Shin Sang-Ok and actress Choi Eun-Hee, both powerful entertainment figures who were forced to make movies for North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il during eight years of captivity beginning in the late ’70s. Fischer sets the stage with extensive historical context covering both sides of the 38th parallel and then shifts into James Bond mode, with a roller-coaster ride of covert intrigue. Park, an American actor with Korean heritage, successfully navigates the minefield between presenting the over-the-top elements of the “hermit kingdom” dictatorship without descending into one-dimensional parody. He gives the individuals inside the isolated nation—ranging from prison guards and household servants to actors and studio bureaucrats—individual attention in his performance rather than simply playing stock villain caricatures. The result will keep listeners on the edge of their seats. A Flatiron hardcover. (Feb.)
A Kim Jong-Il Production: The Extraordinary True Story of a Kidnapped Filmmaker, His Star Actress, and a Young Dictator's Rise to Power
Narrated by Stephen Park
Paul FischerUnabridged — 12 hours, 26 minutes
A Kim Jong-Il Production: The Extraordinary True Story of a Kidnapped Filmmaker, His Star Actress, and a Young Dictator's Rise to Power
Narrated by Stephen Park
Paul FischerUnabridged — 12 hours, 26 minutes
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Overview
Madam Choi vanished first. When*Shin*went to Hong Kong to investigate, he was attacked and woke up wrapped in plastic sheeting aboard a ship bound for North Korea. Madam Choi lived in isolated luxury, allowed only to attend the Dear Leader's dinner parties. Shin, meanwhile, tried to escape, was sent to prison camp, and "re-educated." After four years he cracked, pledging loyalty. Reunited with Choi at the first party he attends, it is announced that the couple will remarry and act as the Dear Leader's film advisors. Together they made seven films, in the process gaining Kim Jong-Il's trust. While pretending to research a film in Vienna, they flee to the U.S. embassy and are swept to safety.
A nonfiction thriller packed with tension, passion, and politics, A Kim Jong-Il Production offers a rare glimpse into a secretive world, illuminating a fascinating chapter of North Korea's history that helps explain how it became the hermetically sealed, intensely stage-managed country it remains today.
Editorial Reviews
12/22/2014
North Korea is a nightmarish movie theater without an exit in this gripping true-life thriller. Fischer, a documentary filmmaker, recounts the 1977–78 abductions of South Korea’s leading director, Shin Sang-Ok, and his ex-wife, the movie star Choi Eun-Hee. The two were abducted on the orders of North Korea’s movie-obsessed crown prince Kim Jong-Il, who wanted them to upgrade the government’s wooden propaganda films with pizzazz and higher production values. The story combines harrowing hardships—Choi endured house arrest and constant Kafkaesque “reeducation” exercises; Shin was starved and tortured in prison after escape attempts—with dizzying reversals of fortune as the couple are rehabilitated to make hit films under Kim’s sponsorship and later plot a nerve-racking flight to the West. In Fischer’s vivid close-up, Kim emerges as “the archetypal film producer” writ monstrous: charming and lordly, basking in parties with Joy Brigade starlets and groveling underlings, full of tasteless visions, and ruthless when crossed. (He ordered a mistress who two-timed him to be shot in front of thousands of spectators, including her husband.) Fischer’s entertaining narrative paints an arresting portrait of a North Korean “theater state,” forced to enact the demented script of a sociopathic tyrant. Photos. (Mar.)
The 1978 abductions of the South Korean actress Choi-Eun-hee and her ex-husband, the director Shin Sang-ok, in Hong Kong is the true crime at the center of Paul Fischer's gripping and surprisingly timely new book.” —The New York Times
“An entertaining new book…details how [Shin and Choi] finally seized their chance to seek asylum…A stupefying, novelistic read.” —The Boston Globe
“Gripping... A Kim Jong-Il Production tells the absurd, harrowing, and true story of Choi and Shin's ordeal, which reveals the importance of film as propaganda to the North Korean regime.” —Esquire.com
“In his exhaustively researched new book, A Kim Jong-Il Production, Paul Fischer has uncovered a story about a film producer who would make any Sony exec look warm and fuzzy…” —Details Magazine
“Nonfiction nail-biter…” —Vulture.com
“That a North Korean dictator should kidnap two South Korean movie stars and force them to make films he hoped would rival Hollywood seems the stuff of fantasy. But it isn't, Kim Jong-Il did and Paul Fischer captivatingly tells perhaps the most extraordinary tale from the world's most bizarre country. A Kim Jong-Il Production is simply flabbergasting!” —Paul French, author of The New York Times bestseller Midnight in Peking
“The incredible tale of how a dictator's obsession with the cinema led to one of them most hair-brained schemes ever concocted: to kidnap a famous South Korean director and his star actress and force them to make movies that would inspire his flagging nation. Kim Jong-Il failed to realize, however, that movies—especially good ones—have a pb ower all their own and that real life rarely follows a script. A KIM JONG-IL PRODUCTION is the true story of desperate movie stars, daring escapes, and the paranoid leader who brought it all together. Equal parts history, thriller, and farce, Fischer's masterful reporting will keep you engrossed until the very end. ” —Matt Baglio, coauthor of The New York Times bestseller ARGO: How the CIA and Hollywood Pulled off the Most Audacious Rescue in History
“In A Kim Jong-Il Production, Paul Fischer defrosts a Cold War story almost too wild to believe, an epic love story that reveals in Technicolor the North Korean hermit kingdom and its movie-obsessed, improbably charismatic late leader. This book is un-put-downable.” —Benjamin Wallace, author of the New York Times bestseller The Billionaire's Vinegar
“Exhaustively researched, highly engossing chronicle of the outrageous abduction of a pair of well-known South Korean filmmakers by the nefarious network of North Korea's Kim Jong-Il. Filmmaker Fischer carefully presents a well-documented story of the kidnapping ... A meticulously detailed feat of rare footage inside the DPRK's propaganda machinery.” —Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)
“North Korea is a nightmarish movie theater without an exit in this gripping true-life thriller ... Fischer's entertaining narrative paints an arresting portrait of a North Korean "theater state," forced to enact the demented script of a sociopathic tyrant.” —Publishers Weekly
“Fischer matches keen cinematic analysis with an unusually cogent and vivid brief history of the two postwar Koreas. The most compelling facets of this book of astonishments are Fischer's insights into the relationships between Choi, Sun, and their diabolical captor... Gripping and revelatory, Fischer's true-life thriller provides a portal into the mad tyranny of North Korea.” —Booklist (Starred Review)
“Paul Fischer's book A Kim Jong-Il Production is a highly illuminating deep dive on the middle Kim's cinematic obsessions and the film arms race between the two Koreas.” —The Washington Post
Fischer matches keen cinematic analysis with an unusually cogent and vivid brief history of the two postwar Koreas. The most compelling facets of this book of astonishments are Fischer's insights into the relationships between Choi, Sun, and their diabolical captor... Gripping and revelatory, Fischer's true-life thriller provides a portal into the mad tyranny of North Korea.
In A Kim Jong-Il Production, Paul Fischer defrosts a Cold War story almost too wild to believe, an epic love story that reveals in Technicolor the North Korean hermit kingdom and its movie-obsessed, improbably charismatic late leader. This book is un-put-downable.
The incredible tale of how a dictator's obsession with the cinema led to one of them most hair-brained schemes ever concocted: to kidnap a famous South Korean director and his star actress and force them to make movies that would inspire his flagging nation. Kim Jong-Il failed to realize, however, that movies--especially good ones--have a pb ower all their own and that real life rarely follows a script. A KIM JONG-IL PRODUCTION is the true story of desperate movie stars, daring escapes, and the paranoid leader who brought it all together. Equal parts history, thriller, and farce, Fischer's masterful reporting will keep you engrossed until the very end.
That a North Korean dictator should kidnap two South Korean movie stars and force them to make films he hoped would rival Hollywood seems the stuff of fantasy. But it isn't, Kim Jong-Il did and Paul Fischer captivatingly tells perhaps the most extraordinary tale from the world's most bizarre country. A Kim Jong-Il Production is simply flabbergasting!
Nonfiction nail-biter…
In his exhaustively researched new book, A Kim Jong-Il Production, Paul Fischer has uncovered a story about a film producer who would make any Sony exec look warm and fuzzy…
An entertaining new book…details how [Shin and Choi] finally seized their chance to seek asylum…A stupefying, novelistic read.
★ 02/15/2015
In 1978, South Korean actress Choi Eun-Hee and her movie director husband, Shin Sang-Ok, disappeared. Five years later they reemerged as North Korean filmmakers. In his first book, film producer Fischer documents Choi and Shin's lives before, during, and after their years of captivity in North Korea. Initially both of them were held separately in luxurious surroundings, unaware that the other had also been kidnapped. After repeated escape attempts, Shin was imprisoned in horrendous circumstances. Eventually both realized that the only way they could ever escape would be to win the trust of their kidnapper, Kim Jong-Il. During a trip to Vienna in 1986, the two managed to elude their minders and sought refuge at the U.S. embassy. Readers will learn about the history of filmmaking in both Koreas, and how Kim Jong-Il used films to help guarantee his position as successor to his father, Kim Il-Sung. VERDICT By examining the lives of these two extraordinary people, Fischer sheds light on politics, society, and culture in secretive North Korea. This enjoyable read is highly recommended for North Korea watchers as well as movie aficionados.—Joshua Wallace, Ranger Coll., TX
★ 2014-11-15
Exhaustively researched, highly engrossing chronicle of the outrageous abduction of a pair of well-known South Korean filmmakers by the nefarious network of North Korea's Kim Jong-Il.Filmmaker Fischer carefully presents a well-documented story of the kidnapping of South Korean actress Choi Eun-Hee and her former husband, film producer Shin Sang-Ok, amid some suspicion that the two secretly defected in order to jump-start their stalling careers (though the author provides ample evidence to the contrary). After a stunningly successful moviemaking collaboration that spanned the mid-1950s until their divorce in 1974, Choi and Shin had gone their own ways by 1978. Choi was raising their two adopted children and mostly teaching acting while Shin saw his studio stripped of its license due to his wheeling and dealing. Meanwhile, Kim Jong-Il—a film fanatic who cleverly insinuated himself as the sole standing heir to his father, Democratic People's Republic of Korea founder Kim Il-Sung, via his richly propagandistic output by the Korea Film Studio—craved validation and expertise in order to be taken seriously in the international community. Hence the scheme to kidnap the two reigning South Korean film idols, re-educate them and allow them all they needed to refashion the North Korean film industry. This is just what happened: The two stars were lured to Hong Kong—first Choi in January 1978, then Shin in September—and hustled onto a freighter and taken to Pyongyang. Isolated, imprisoned in luxury homes (Shin spent two years in prison for trying to escape), summoned periodically to Kim's birthday parties and expected to drink heavily and be merry, the two were eventually thrown together in 1983 and directed to reignite their collaboration and marriage. Seven films later, including the Godzilla-like Pulgasari (1985)—they took asylum in the U.S. Embassy in Vienna. A meticulously detailed feat of rare footage inside the DPRK's propaganda machinery.
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940169409376 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Penguin Random House |
| Publication date: | 02/03/2015 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
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