Kim Jong Il: The Cinephile’s Secret Tapes

Those recordings completely shattered the myth of his silence.

I think "making it up" is a bit harsh, though I see why you would say that. The reality was more unsettling. We knew he was the heir, the next "Dear Leader" in waiting, but he was a total cipher. The international intelligence community, including the CIA, had this massive, gaping blind spot. They did not even know if he could physically speak.

There were persistent rumors that he had a severe speech impediment or some form of social mutism. He never gave public speeches like his father, Kim Il Sung. In a regime built on oratory and "on-the-spot guidance," that silence was loud. It created this image of a man who was either incompetent or a shadow-dwelling puppet master. People were guessing based on grainy photos and third-hand accounts from diplomats who maybe saw the back of his head once.

It was bold, bordering on reckless. First, they grabbed Choi Eun-hee. She was the most famous actress in South Korea at the time. Then, a few months later, they went back for her ex-husband, the director Shin Sang-ok. This was not a random snatch-and-grab. Kim Jong Il was obsessed with cinema. He did not just want to watch movies. He wanted to own the people who made them. But here is the thing. For five years, the world had no idea where they were.

The South Korean government suspected something, but they had no proof. Meanwhile, Choi and Shin were living a nightmare. They were kept in separate villas and forced through intense ideological re-education. Shin actually tried to escape and ended up in a prison camp. Actually, it was two different camps over four years. It was brutal. Kim was basically breaking them down to rebuild them as his personal film studio.

He was a different person behind closed doors. He finally brought them together in nineteen-eighty-three at a banquet. That was the first time they realized they were both in Pyongyang. And that is when the voice comes in. He started talking. He talked for hours. He was funny, he was self-deprecating, and he was obsessive. He was nothing like the "mute" the CIA expected.

I think he was lonely. He wanted peers. He wanted people who understood art. He thought he had successfully "converted" them to his cause. He was so confident in his power over them that he let his guard down. He did not realize that Choi Eun-hee was an actress. She was playing a role.

You have to record him. But how do you capture the voice of a man who never speaks to the world? Especially when he is the most guarded person on the planet?

I still struggle to wrap my head around the sheer nerves it took to walk into that room. After those years of isolation and prison camps we talked about, Shin and Choi were finally reunited at a state banquet in nineteen eighty-three. They were standing right in front of the man who had stolen their lives. They knew that if they ever escaped, the world would think they were traitors who went north for the money. They needed proof.

Choi Eun-hee hid a microcassette recorder right in her handbag. It was nineteen eighty-three, so we are talking about bulky, mechanical tech. If that tape made a clicking sound when it reached the end, or if a guard just glanced too closely at her purse, they were dead. They were desperate to show they hadn't defected willingly.

It sounds like a massive security lapse, but the reality is more about Kim's ego. He was in his "charming host" phase. He wanted these filmmakers to love him and to be his creative partners. He let his guard down because he truly believed he had already won them over.

It was a bombshell for the C-I-A and South Korean intelligence. For years, the leading theory was that Kim Jong Il was a mute or had a crippling speech impediment. These nineteen eighty-three recordings provided the first audio evidence of his voice. It debunked those rumors instantly. He was dominating the room.

That part catches everyone off guard. On the tape, he actually makes fun of his own physical appearance to his captives. He says, "Look at me. Aren't I small? Like a midget's stool?" It’s a bizarre, almost disarming moment. It completely shattered the god-like propaganda image the North was projecting.

I... honestly don't know. It’s a question historians still debate. Was he being human, or was he just a skilled director playing a role to keep his "stars" from running? Either way, it gave the West a psychological profile they never had before.

They did. Among the hours of chatter about movies and jokes, there was a specific moment where the mask slipped. Kim Jong Il started talking about the mechanics of the kidnapping itself. He gave a chillingly direct reason for why he had taken them in the first place.

I remember the first time I heard the digitized version of those recordings. I was in a quiet library basement. Hearing his voice—it's high-pitched, a bit raspy—it felt like I was eavesdropping on a crime. On October nineteenth, nineteen eighty-three, he actually delivered a recorded, explicit apology to the director Shin Sang-ok and the actress Choi Eun-hee. He told them, and I'm quoting here, "I told my people... bring them here by any means." It's a chillingly blunt admission. He orchestrated the whole thing because he was bored with the art in his own country.

He needed them to work for him. He didn't want them just sitting in a cell. He was frustrated. On those tapes, he complained that North Korean films were "too full of crying." That was his specific phrase. He felt the propaganda was stale. It lacked the "new ideas" he needed to compete on the world stage. He wanted a film industry that could stand up to the West. To do that, he gave them access to his private stash. It was a climate-controlled library with over fifteen thousand international films.

He had agents in North Korean embassies all over the world. They were in places like East Berlin and Macau. Their primary job was to source the latest releases. He was obsessed with the James Bond series, which is ironic given the politics. He also loved Friday the Thirteenth. These were films that would get an ordinary North Korean citizen sent to a labor camp just for owning a poster. Yet he was sitting there analyzing the editing techniques.

The North Korean film industry at the time was very rigid. It was all about the revolutionary struggle and the greatness of the Kim family. By bringing in Shin, who was a legendary director, Kim thought he could inject some of that Western energy into the local productions.

It wasn't about the masks or the gore. It was about the pacing and the technical skill. Kim realized that if his movies were boring, nobody outside North Korea would watch them. He wanted to use the suspense of a slasher or the gadgets of a Bond film. He thought that would make his political messages more digestible for an international audience. He was trying to build a Trojan horse. He wanted to fix the "crying" problem by making films that looked like Hollywood blockbusters but felt like Pyongyang.

That's the part that's hard to wrap your head around. He treated them like honored guests after years of imprisonment. He gave them a massive budget, a studio, and his fifteen-thousand-film archive. He thought that by providing the best technology and the best teachers—meaning the Western films—Shin would naturally want to create masterpieces for the North Korean state. It was a bizarre mix of coercion and a twisted form of patronage.

Looking at the ledger is genuinely sickening. The brand was Hennessy Paradis. According to the company's own sales records, he was the world’s largest individual consumer of that liquor for years. This was happening right as he shifted away from that nineteen-eighty-three apology we talked about. He moved into this frantic, almost manic period of film production. He forced Shin Sang-ok and Choi Eun-hee to churn out seven feature films in just over two years. It was a fantasy factory fueled by the most expensive liquor on earth.

He was the obsessive executive producer. He wasn't just watching. He micromanaged every single frame. The most bizarre example is the nineteen-eighty-five film Pulgasari. It was his attempt at a Godzilla-style epic. He didn't have the technology, so he basically committed international fraud to get it. He tricked the special effects team from Japan’s Toho Studios—the actual creators of Godzilla—into coming to Pyongyang.

It sounds like a spy novel, but the records are clear. They were told they were going to Beijing for a Chinese production. When their plane landed in Pyongyang, they were essentially trapped. Kim wanted the Godzilla magic. He didn't care about the ethics of how he got the magicians there.

They noticed the second they saw the portraits at the airport. But by then, the invitation had turned into a command. They were told their safety depended on the quality of the miniature sets they built. They were even given a man in a monster suit to work with. It was surreal. They were working under the shadow of a regime that had kidnapped their director, making a movie about a metal-eating monster that leads a peasant revolt.

I'm honestly torn on that. Let me back up. On one hand, he wanted international respect. He wanted a film that could play in Cannes. But when you look at the sheer cost—the cognac, the imported talent—it feels more like a man building a private reality. The one outside his window was just too grim to face.

That is actually where it backfired. The irony is that by giving Shin and Choi these massive budgets and his absolute trust, he was trying to buy their loyalty. In reality, he was giving them the resources they needed to escape. He gave them travel and international bank accounts. He thought he was building a cultural empire, but he was inadvertently handing them the exact tools they needed to plan a way out.

I think looking at it as an exit is slightly the wrong angle. For Kim, Vienna wasn't a risk. It was a stage. He was so convinced of his own charisma and the lure of his money that he thought they were tied to him by choice. It wasn't just force. By nineteen eighty-six, he had given them a level of autonomy that was unheard of for any other North Korean citizen.

It looked like a two point three million dollar bank account sitting in Vienna. That was the seed money for Shin Films, their international production company. Kim wanted them to win at the big festivals like Cannes and Berlin. He knew they couldn't do that if they were filming in a basement in Pyongyang. So he let them travel. He let them breathe the air of the West. He thought the money would act as a leash.

It was incredibly tense. During a trip to Vienna in nineteen eighty-six, they were staying at the Inter-Continental. They managed to lose their minders in the hotel lobby and literally bolted for a taxi. They told the driver to go as fast as possible to the U.S. Embassy. They left that two million dollar fund behind without a second thought. They weren't interested in the money. They were interested in the cassettes.

Those tapes were their insurance policy. They had spent years secretly recording their private conversations with Kim Jong Il. You have to understand that at the time, the West didn't even know what his voice sounded like. He was a ghost. And suddenly, Shin and Choi walk into the embassy with hours of the world's most reclusive dictator just talking.

It was much more than that. It was a total psychological autopsy. On those tapes, you can hear Kim complaining about the bureaucracy of his own government. He talks about how North Koreans need to be more open to the world. He even mocks his own short stature. For the CIA and other agencies, this was the first time they could map the mind of the man who would eventually lead a nuclear state.

I am not sure I would call it a victory that changed the regime's trajectory, but it stripped away the myth. Kim Jong Il wanted to be the director of a grand, cinematic revolution. Instead, he ended up as a voice on a smuggled tape. He sounded insecure and deeply frustrated with the system he controlled. The filmmakers got the final cut. He was left with an empty bank account and a loud, public silence.

He tried to claim they were still loyal and that the U.S. had kidnapped them from him. But the tapes told a different story. They were the one thing he couldn't edit.

The recordings show that his vanity was his greatest weakness. He was focused on gaining international respect. He was so focused on it that he ignored the risks of letting them travel. He wanted to prove he was more than a midget's stool. By doing that, he handed them the resources they needed to get free. His obsession with movies meant he missed what his captives were actually planning.