Shin Sang-ok

Sometime between 1925 and 1926, Shin was born Shin Tae-ik () or Shin Tae-seo () His father was a prominent doctor of Korean medicine. ==Career in South Korea (1946–1978)==

Shin started his film career as an assistant production designer on Choi In-kyu's Viva Freedom!, the first Korean film made after the country achieved independence from Japan. During the "Golden Age" of South Korean cinema in the late 1950s and 1960s, Shin worked prolifically, often directing two or more films per year, earning the nickname the "Prince of South Korean Cinema". Shin featured the Western princess, female sex workers for American soldiers, in The Evil Night (1952) and A Flower in Hell (1958). The production company he started, Shin Films, produced around 300 films during the 1960s, During the 1970s, Shin became less active, while South Korea's cinema industry in general suffered under strict censorship and constant government interference. Most of the films he directed during this period ended up being flops. ==North Korean period (1978–1986)==

In 1978, Shin's former wife, Choi Eun-hee, an actress who starred in many of his films, was kidnapped in Hong Kong and taken to North Korea. Shin himself came under suspicion of causing her disappearance and when he traveled to Hong Kong to investigate, he was kidnapped as well. The kidnappings were on orders of future leader Kim Jong Il, who wanted to establish a film industry for his country to sway international opinion regarding the views of the Workers' Party of Korea. The North Korean authorities have denied the kidnapping accusations, claiming that Shin came to the country willingly. Shin and Choi made secret audiotapes of conversations with Kim Jong Il, which supported their story. From 1983 on, Shin directed seven films, with Kim Jong Il acting as an executive producer. The last and best-known of these films is Pulgasari, a giant-monster film similar to the Japanese Godzilla. In 1986, eight years after his kidnapping, Shin and his wife escaped while in Vienna for a film festival. They managed to obtain political asylum from the US embassy in Vienna and Kim Jong Il became convinced that the couple had been kidnapped by the Americans. Shin and his wife lived covertly for two years in Reston, Virginia, under American protection and authorities debriefed the couple about Kim Jong Il and their experience in North Korea. ==Late life (1986–2006)==

The couple finally staged their escape in 1986 while on a trip to Vienna, where they fled to the United States embassy and requested political asylum. According to former CIA agent Michael Lee, Choi and Shin became American citizens in 1989 (three years after their escape) and adopted the names Theresa Sheen and Simon Sheen respectively. At first, Shin was reluctant to go back to South Korea, because he feared that the government's security police would not believe the kidnapping story; he eventually returned to South Korea permanently in 1994 and continued to work on new movies. The same year, he was invited to the Cannes Film Festival as a jury member. His last movie as a director was an unreleased 2002 film called Kyeoul-iyagi (The Story of Winter). Shin ended his career in 2004. That year, Shin underwent a liver transplant. He died of complications caused by hepatitis two years later. At the time of his death he was planning a musical about Genghis Khan. South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun posthumously awarded Shin the Gold Crown Cultural Medal on April 12, 2006, the country's top honor for an artist. == In media ==

In 2015, an English language biography of his life (along with Choi Eun-hee), called A Kim Jong-Il Production: The Extraordinary True Story of a Kidnapped Filmmaker, was published by Paul Fischer. In January 2016, at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, in the World Cinema Documentary Competition, a documentary about the North Korean ordeal, entitled The Lovers and the Despot and directed by Robert Cannan and Ross Adam, was presented. In 2017, BBC Radio 4 broadcast a drama Lights, Camera, Kidnap!, based on Shin's ordeal, written by Lucy Catherine, directed by Sasha Yevtushenko, and starring Paul Courtenay Hyu as Shin and Liz Sutherland as Choi. ==Works==

Filmography Partial filmography as director: Executive producer • Galgameth (1996) Bibliography • • • • • • ==See also==