Чхве Ынхи: Жизнь и судьба южнокорейской актрисы.

South Korean actress (1926–2018)

Choi Eun hee (hangul=최은희; November 20, 1926 – April 16, 2018) was a South Korean actress, who was one of the country's most popular stars of the 1960s and 1970s. In 1978, Choi and her then ex husband, movie director Shin Sang ok, were abducted to North Korea, where they were forced to make films until they sought asylum at the U. S. embassy in Vienna in 1986. They returned to South Korea in 1999 after spending a decade in the United States.

Choi was born in Gwangju, Gyeonggi Province, in 1926. Her first acting role was in the 1947 film A New Oath. After marrying the director Shin Sang ok in 1954, the two founded Shin Film. Choi went on to act in over 130 films and was considered one of the biggest stars of South Korean film in the 1960s and 1970s. She starred in many of Shin's iconic films including 1958's A Flower in Hell and 1961's The Houseguest and My Mother. After she was diagnosed with infertility, they adopted two children together, Jeong kyun and Myung kim.

In 1976, Choi divorced Shin after seeing news that he had fathered two children with the young actress Oh Su mi. Choi's career began to suffer after her divorce, and she traveled to Hong Kong in 1978 to meet with a person posing as a businessman who offered to set up a new film company with her. In North Korea, Choi and Shin were remarried, at Kim's recommendation.

The couple finally staged their escape in 1986 while on a trip to Vienna, where they fled to the U. S. embassy and requested political asylum. On April 16, 2018, Choi died in hospital where she was due to have a kidney dialysis during the afternoon. 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, directed by Robert Cannan and Ross Adam, was presented.