Солтүстік Кореяда тұтқын болған кино өнер шебері Шин Сан Ок

South Korean film producer and director

Shin Sang ok (; born Shin Tae seo; October 11, 1926 – April 11, 2006) was a South Korean filmmaker with more than 100 producer and 70 director credits to his name. His best known films were made in the 1950s and 60s, many of them collaborations with his wife Choi Eun hee, when he was known as "The Prince of South Korean Cinema". He received posthumously the Gold Crown Cultural Medal, the country's top honor for an artist. In 1978, Shin and Choi were kidnapped by North Korean leader Kim Jong il for the purpose of producing critically acclaimed films. The two remained in captivity for 8 years until 1986, when they escaped and sought asylum in the United States. Shin continued to produce and direct films in America, now under the pseudonym "Simon Sheen", before eventually returning to South Korea for his final years.

The son of a prominent doctor of Korean medicine, Shin was born Shin Tae seo in Chongjin, in the northeastern part of the Korean Peninsula, at the time occupied by Japan and currently a part of North Korea. Shin studied in Japan at Tokyo Fine Arts School, the predecessor of Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, before returning to Korea three years later. Shin started his film career as an assistant production designer on Choi In kyu's Viva Freedom!, the first Korean film made after the country achieved independence from Japan. During the "Golden Age" of South Korean cinema in the late 1950s and 1960s, Shin worked prolifically, often directing two or more films per year, earning the nickname the "Prince of South Korean Cinema". Shin featured the Western princess, female sex workers for American soldiers, in The Evil Night (1952) and A Flower in Hell (1958). The production company he started, Shin Films, produced around 300 films during the 1960s, The North Korean authorities have denied the kidnapping accusations, claiming that Shin came to the country willingly. Shin and Choi made secret audiotapes of conversations with Kim Jong il, which supported their story. From 1983 on, Shin directed seven films, with Kim Jong il acting as an executive producer. The last and best known of these films is Pulgasari, a giant monster film similar to the Japanese Godzilla. In 1986, eight years after his kidnapping, Shin and his wife escaped while in Vienna for a film festival. In January 2016, at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, in the World Cinema Documentary Competition, a documentary about the North Korean ordeal, entitled The Lovers and the Despot and directed by Robert Cannan and Ross Adam, was presented. In 2017, BBC Radio 4 broadcast a drama Lights, Camera, Kidnap!, based on Shin's ordeal, written by Lucy Catherine, directed by Sasha Yevtushenko, and starring Paul Courtenay Hyu as Shin and Liz Sutherland as Choi.