Kim Jong-il arranged kidnapping to have movies made to order

NORTH Korean leader Kim Jong-il loves movies so much so he arranged the kidnapping of a film director and his wife and held them for eight years.

Actress Choe Eun-hui from South Korea, was kidnapped in Hong Kong by Kim Jong-il's secret agents in 1978. She was taken to Pyongyang.

Her husband immediately flew from Seoul to Hong Kong to look for his wife, and was himself kidnapped.

"Kim Jong-il later confessed to me the reason he kidnapped my wife first was because he wanted me to come and make films for him," Shin Sang-ok recalls.

Keen to add to his 15,000-strong collection of movies among his favourites were James Bond and Rambo Kim Jong-il placed $2.5m into an Austrian bank account and told Mr Shin to use the money to make "good" films.

Over the next two years Mr Shin made more than 20 films, many of them propaganda tales commissioned by the man himself.

While he worked, his wife was locked in a room in the leader's summerhouse. Mr Shin received long terms in prison after twice trying to escape.

In 1986, the couple were allowed to travel abroad together for the first time since their arrival in North Korea eight years earlier.

They went to a film festival in Vienna heavily chaperoned by a team of North Korean minders. Their guards travelled in a taxi

behind as they headed for the festival hall. They managed to bribe their driver and escaped towards the US embassy where they asked for asylum.

When he was told the couple were missing, Kim Jong-il became convinced the couple had been kidnapped by the Americans, and sent them a message offering to help them get them back to Pyongyang.

It was an offer they could happily refuse.