Shin Sang-ok was a South Korean filmmaker with more than 100 producer and 70 director credits to his name.
14 Facts About Shin Sang-ok
2.
Shin Sang-ok received posthumously the Gold Crown Cultural Medal, the country's top honor for an artist.
3.
Shin Sang-ok continued to produce and direct films in America, now under the pseudonym "Simon Sheen", before eventually returning to South Korea for his final years.
4.
The son of a prominent doctor of Korean medicine, Shin Sang-ok was born Shin Sang-ok Tae-seo was born in Chongjin, in the northeastern part of the Korean Peninsula, at the time occupied by Japan and currently a part of North Korea.
5.
Shin Sang-ok 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.
6.
The production company he started, Shin Sang-ok Films, produced around 300 films during the 1960s, including Prince Yeonsan, the winner of the Best Film prize at the first Grand Bell Awards ceremony and a Grand Bell Award-winning 1964 remake of Na Woon-gyu's 1926 Beongeoli Sam-ryong.
7.
Shin Sang-ok himself came under suspicion of causing her disappearance and when he traveled to Hong Kong to investigate, he was kidnapped as well.
8.
The North Korean authorities have denied the kidnapping accusations, claiming that Shin Sang-ok came to the country willingly.
9.
Shin Sang-ok was put in comfortable accommodation, but after two escape attempts was placed in a prison for over two years.
10.
Shin Sang-ok's ex-wife was brought to the same dinner party, where she first learned that Shin was in North Korea.
11.
From 1983 on, Shin Sang-ok directed seven films, with Kim Jong-il acting as an executive producer.
12.
At first, Shin Sang-ok was reluctant to go back to South Korea, because he feared that the government's security police would not believe the kidnapping story; he eventually returned to South Korea permanently in 1994 and continued to work on new movies.
13.
Shin Sang-ok's last movie as a director was an unreleased 2002 film called Kyeoul-iyagi.
14.
Shin Sang-ok died of complications caused by hepatitis two years later.