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A Kim Jong-Il Production: The Extraordinary True Story of a Kidnapped Filmmaker, His Star Actress, and a Young Dictator's Rise to Power Audiobook
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Publisher Description
Before becoming the world’s most notorious dictator, Kim Jong-Il ran North Korea’s Ministry for Propaganda and its film studios. Conceiving every movie made, he acted as producer and screenwriter. Despite this control, he was underwhelmed by the available talent and took drastic steps, ordering the kidnapping of Choi Eun-Hee (Madam Choi)—South Korea’s most famous actress—and her ex-husband Shin Sang-Ok, the country’s most famous filmmaker.
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.
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“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 unputdownable.”
— Benjamin Wallace, author of the New York Times bestseller The Billionaire’s Vinegar
Quotes
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“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 -
“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 -
“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 -
“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.”
— Kirkus Reviews
Awards
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A Library Journal Best Book of 2015
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A 2015 Amazon Best Books of the Year Selection for Nonfiction
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A Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books of 2015 for Nonfiction
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About Paul Fischer
Paul Fischer is an author and film producer based in the United Kingdom. His first book, A Kim Jong-Il Production, was nominated for the Crime Writers’ Association’s Nonfiction Book Award. It was chosen as an Amazon Best of the Year Nonfiction Selection, one of Library Journal’s Top Ten Books of the Year, and one of NPR’s Best Books of The Year. He has also written for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and The Independent, amongst others. In addition to writing, he works as a film producer and is an alumni of the Guiding Lights mentorship program. His first feature screenplay, The Body, based on a short film of his conception, was produced by Blumhouse and Hulu in 2018, starring Tom Bateman, Rebecca Rittenhouse, Aurora Perrineau, David Hull, and Ray Santiago.
About Stephen Park
Stephen Park is an actor and audiobook narrator. He has appeared in the films State of Play, A Serious Man, Fargo, Toys, Kindergarten Cop, and Do the Right Thing. He was a regular cast member for one season on In Living Color and has appeared on Smash, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, White Collar, The Venture Bros., and Friends.