"Pulgasari": True Escapism

I have a confession. South Korean films baffle me. They are not entirely bad by any means, but rather just confusing—mostly because of their seeming disregard for genre. “Host,” for example, is a light-hearted, dysfunctional family story until a giant Godzilla-type monster starts terrorizing the city. And from monster genre, it turns into this police-state allegory, then character-drama with a family being torn apart (emotionally, then physically). Then it’s a comedy again. Anyways, the most baffling aspect of South Korean cinema is that nobody has made a film about the most incredible story that ever fallen into an industry’s collective lap. This is the—I swear to God—true story of director Shin Sang-ok and his collaborations with North Korea’s batshit insane dictator, Kim Jong-il.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Shin Sang-ok was one of the few critically renowned South Korean film directors, in a nation less than a generation out of the bi-Korean cease-fire. In the mid-1970s, Shin let it slip that he was critical of the repressive South Korean government and was promptly shut down by said sensitive government. By any measure, Shin was ruined by, and pissed at, his militaristic government. Doubly unfortunate, Shin was not alone in this sentiment and his famous actress-wife Choi Eun-hee divorced him. While packing her bags, Choi told him that she was going to Hong Kong, hearing about some filmmaker who wanted to work with her, specifically. In all likelihood, Shin collapsed in his chair, gave one of his Joe Every Man-thousand-yard stares and wondered how his life had become the first one-fifth of a Steven Spielberg movie.

In Hong Kong, Choi met with the filmmakers and, in an unusual casting technique, was kidnapped and smuggled to North Korea. Yeah, still think your job interview went bad? While Kim Jong-il wasn’t yet the head leader of North Korea (that position belonging to his father at this time), Kim was the director of propaganda and other spheres of political/military influence—including the filmmaking-arm. And the wheels in Kim’s head had been spinning for some time. As a young man, Kim Jong-il literally wrote the (or at least “a”) book on the relations between film art and spreading the greatness of North Korea. For years North Korean filmmakers disappointed him, despite all his threats, imprisoning, physical/psychological abusing, kidnappings and executions. So Kim, in all his batshit craziness, decided to import the best Asian filmmakers he could (this side of Akira Kurosawa, of course).

In South Korea, Shin Sang-ok hears rumors about his ex-wife being kidnapped and possibly killed in Hong Kong. Unlike The Honeymooners’ Ralph Kramden, who might celebrate some relief from his wife, Shin booked it to Hong Kong to start his own investigation. Amazingly, Shin found the kidnappers and they, appropriately, kidnapped him, too. In North Korea, Shin was placed in a pretty fancy hotel and even received his own guards who wanted to protect him so much that they stopped him from leaving, making phone calls or asking too many questions. Despite his eagerness to see the sights of the foreign city, they assured him, no, there was nothing to see or do and to stay in his room. Before long, Shin attempted to escape the premises but was caught. Insulted, the North Korean guards moved Shin and decided to put the film director somewhere really safe…prison.

In the North Korean prison, Shin ate grass, salt and the occasional side dish of rice. To be even bigger jerks, the guards told Shin that his kidnapped wife was dead. Reflecting on his time there, Shin has said, “I experienced the limits of human beings.” And that is how he spent his life for the next FOUR YEARS.

Then something strange happened. (Finally!) In his jail cell, Shin received a dinner invitation to the grand palace of one Kim Jong-il. Starving, grieving and otherwise losing his mind, Shin was taken to the palace and led to a large dinner table, set for three. Kim Jong-il takes the head of the table and across from Shin sat somebody even more heart stopping: Shin’s wife, Choi Eun-hee.

Besting the imagination of any sitcom, this dinner was about to get a lot more awkward. Politely, Kim Jong-il apologized to both of his guests for their, separate, four-year imprisonment. Kim laughed to himself, embarrassed that he and his subordinates had mis-communicated a while back. Apparently nobody had caught the mistake earlier because it had just been “chaos back at the office.” Ah, well, Kim assured his undoubtedly speechless guests, the important thing is that we are all here and can talk about a future together. Specifically, Kim wanted Shin and Choi to creatively reunite and make movies for North Korea. They’d be paid well, have over 200 employees, and thousands of soldiers to use as overly synchronized extras.

"Do you need ridiculous marching? Because we got that shit covered!"

It’s unclear if Shin and Choi ever really ate at their dinner with Kim Jong-il, but what is certain is that the dictator rambled for over two hours about communism and cinema. And then, as if to gently blow over a woozy opponent in lieu of a knockout-hit, Kim Jong-il asked the divorced couple, Shin and Choi, to get remarried.

I’ll give you a couple of days to think about that scene.

To be continued…