A veteran actress has recalled North Korean leader Kim Jong-il as an impressive culture devotee so dedicated that he would write down dance moves on paper.
"He was the first man I met who attempted to make a 'dance notation.' I was curious how dance moves could be transformed onto paper, but I never stayed to see it being printed," South Korean actress Choi Eun-hee said in an interview with Yonhap News Agency. "Aside from everything else, Chairman Kim was highly communicative when it came to culture and films. He was a man who learned about the world through movies."
Choi was kidnapped to Pyongyang in 1978 and made 17 films there under the North Korean dictator's watchful eyes with her husband director Shin Sang-ok, who passed away in 2006.
"We were treated well (in North Korea), but could not really pursue an artistic career," Choi was quoted as saying. "They still call us traitors for fleeing."
The 82-year-old actress made headlines around the world after the abduction by the North. Kim, a widely-known film buff, had wanted director Shin to work as his propagandist and for Choi to be the star, claiming their talents were being wasted in South Korea.
Previously divorced in the South, Shin and Choi remarried in Pyongyang and finally staged their escape in 1986 while on a state-sponsored trip to Vienna, requesting political asylum through the U.S. embassy. They returned to South Korea in 1999.
While her husband continued to pursue his film career after returning to Seoul, Choi has since retired. But she is still regarded as one of the biggest female stars of the mid-century Golden Era of Korean cinema, having starred in nearly 100 films since her movie debut in 1947.