South Korean actress kidnapped and forced to make North Korean movies dies at 92

SEOUL, South Korea -- Choi Eun-hee, a South Korean film icon once kidnapped by North Korean leader Kim Jong Il's regime in 1970s, has died at age of 92.

She succumbed to chronic kidney disease on Tuesday, her eldest son, Shin Jeong-gyun, himself now a director in South Korea, told Yonhap News Agency.

Having begun her film career in 1947 at the age of 21, Choi became a star after the movie "The Sun of Night" debuted the following year. In 1954, she married a promising director named Shin Sang-ok. Choi starred in 130 films directed by Shin during the glory days of South Korea's film industry. The couple divorced in 1977.

In 1978, Choi disappeared without trace during a visit to Hong Kong. Shin searched for his ex-wife overseas and also went missing about a year later. Authorities later confirmed that both had been taken to North Korea, where the pair produced 17 movies, including the 1985 film "Salt," for which Choi won Best Actress at the Moscow Film Festival. Doing so, she became the first Korean to win an award at an international film festival.

Kim Jong Il kidnapped the pair after deciding that North Korean filmmakers could not depict stories as he intended, according to South Korea’s National Intelligence report in 1984, which was exposed by Monthly Chosun. At the time, Kim was leading espionage operations in South, gearing up to become his country's leader after his father, Kim Il Sung.

In 1986, Choi and Shin escaped from North Korea to the U.S., where they requested asylum, eventually returning home to South Korea in 1999.