The Invitation-Only Zone Read Online Free Page B

he had thousands of foreign films shipped back to him via diplomatic pouch. 6 His favorite movies were reported to be Friday the 13th , Rambo , and Godzilla . Soon after releasing Shin from prison, Kim took him to his twenty-thousand-film archive, a three-story humidity- and temperature-controlled, guardedbuilding in central Pyongyang. The archive had 250 employees: translators, subtitle specialists, and projectionists. But no individual was more important than the director in helping the people develop into true Communists. “This historic task requires, above all, a revolutionary transformation of the practice of directing,” Kim wrote in his 1973 treatise, On the Art of the Cinema . Kim wantedShin to improve the North’s film industry so it could produce movies worthy of the international festival circuit. North Korea would press the cause of world communism by getting films into Cannes.
    The combination of political and financial pressure had driven Shin’s South Korean film company out of business, and rumors were circulating that he had defected to the North voluntarily in order toadvance his career. If Shin wanted the South Korean authorities to believe he had been abducted, he needed evidence. On the evening of October 19, 1983, Choi and Shin met with Kim Jong-il in his office. Choi had purchased a small tape recorder, which she carried in her handbag. The three sat around a glass-topped table drinking. Choi pretended to reach into her bag for a tissue and quietly turnedthe recorder on. She and Shin took turns asking Kim leading questions: Why did you bring us here? How did you organize our kidnappings? Clearly enjoying the repartee, Kim talked a blue streak. “I’ll confess the truth only to you two,” he said. “But I would appreciate it if you keep this a secret just between ourselves.
    “Frankly speaking, we still lag behind the Western countries in motion pictures,”Kim explained. “Our filmmakers do perfunctory work. They don’t have any new ideas. Their works use the same expression, the same old plots. All our movies are filled with crying and sobbing.” He was in a difficult situation. How could he open the country to outside influences without jeopardizing his control? He had sent directors to study in East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and the Soviet Union,but he couldn’t allow them to go to Japan or the West. That was why Kim needed Shin so urgently. Shin said he was flattered, but wondered exactly why Kim had gone to the lengths of kidnapping them. “I absolutely needed you,” Kim answered. “So I began to covet you, but there was nothing I could do. So I told my comrades, if we want to get Director Shin here, we have to plan a covert operation.”
    Toward the end of the conversation, Kim offered a weak apology. “I’ve also conducted my own self-criticism,” he said. “That’s because I never told my subordinates in detail what my plans were. I never told them just how we would use you and my intentions. I just said I need those two people, so bring them here. As a result, there have been a lot of mutual misunderstandings.” 7 The tape ran out afterforty-five minutes, and Choi was too frightened to change it. It didn’t matter. She and Shin had the proof they needed.
    Shin continued to make films for the next three years, directing seven and producing eleven more. As Kim grew to trust the couple, they were allowed to travel more, first in the Eastern Bloc and eventually beyond, although always accompanied by minders. On March 13, 1986, theyescaped during a film festival in Vienna, evading their minders’ car and asking for asylum at the U.S. embassy.
    On hearing about their escape, Kim Jong-il assumed they had been kidnapped by the United States. The possibility that artists with whom he had been so generous would abandon him was too much for Kim to imagine. He sent a message offering to help them return to Pyongyang. They neverreplied.

    Kenji Fujimoto (Associated Press)
    Oddly, Kim