[grakasja]

It's actually debated whether the director was "kidnapped". Lots of people in Korea believe he went willingly.

His left-wing films had been banned in the South, and Kim Jong-il offered him superstardom, big budgets and creative control. North Korea was not as bad back then, relatively speaking. Its economy still enjoyed support from both China and the USSR and it could trade with the entire Eastern bloc. South Korea was also a dictatorial military regime at the time (didn't get democracy until 1980s), and lots of South Koreans and Koreans in Japan actually moved to the North in the 60s and 70s. Shin was also generously allowed to "escape" with his family at a film festival after he and Kim ran into creative differences.

On another note Pulgasari is an interesting film because it contains a coded criticism of the Kim regime at the end.

[rat87]

This seems incredibly unlikely https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abduction_of_Shin_Sang-ok_an...

> To defend themselves should they ever escape North Korea, Choi and Shin decided to sneak in a tape recorder to their conversations with Kim Jong Il so they would have proof that they did not willingly leave the South. In one conversation recorded on October 19, 1983, Kim spoke openly about his plot to kidnap Shin and Choi to upgrade North Korea's film industry. He told Shin and Choi that it would be best if they spoke to the press saying that they came to North Korea voluntarily.[3] Shin and Choi attended a press conference on April 12, 1984, in Belgrade, Yugoslavia where they said they were in North Korea by their own choosing.

[grakasja]

Their re-defection in Vienna seems extremely unlikely. The tape doesn't actually say that they were kidnapped from Hong Kong, that's the summary of a Wikipedia editor. Shin later said that if he had been blocked from making films in the 60s he would have gone to the North voluntarily. We only have his version of the story after he left NK, and the NK government version which are both going to be biased. The truth could be somewhere in the middle e.g. he was lured for a visit or talks and then kept against his will when he changed his mind.