[3] In January 1978, Choi was abducted in Hong Kong and taken to North Korea to the country's future supreme leader Kim Jong Il.

[7] Kim Jong Il joined the Propaganda and Agitation Department in 1966 and soon became director of the Motion Picture and Arts Division.

As director, he reached the public with films and operas homogeneous in theme: pride in the nation and specifically in Kim Il Sung.

Charles K. Armstrong writes in his book, Tyranny of the Weak: North Korea and the World 1950–1992, that "Kim took North Korean arts in a direction that seemed specifically designed to ensure his father's favor: under his guidance, new films and operas focused as never before on the anti-Japanese struggle of Kim Il Sung and his comrades in Manchuria during the 1930s".

[12] According to an April 1984 report by South Korea's Agency for National Security Planning (ANSP), Choi was abducted by North Korean agents in Hong Kong on January 14, 1978.

[7] Their films included the following: To defend themselves should they ever escape North Korea, Choi and Shin decided to sneak in a tape recorder to their conversations with Kim Jong Il so they would have proof that they did not willingly leave the South.

In one conversation recorded on October 19, 1983, Kim spoke openly about his plot to kidnap Shin and Choi to upgrade North Korea's film industry.

Kim had requested Choi and Shin travel to the Austrian city to find someone that would finance a biographical film about Genghis Khan.

[21] On March 12, 1986, the couple checked into the InterContinental Vienna to meet a journalist named Akira Enoki under the pretense of an interview, and convinced their North Korean bodyguards to leave the room.

[22] The New York Times posted an article on March 22, 1986, announcing that the couple got away from their North Korean caretakers and sought political asylum in the US embassy.

[23] Following their escape, Shin lived in the United States for many years working in the film industry before returning home to South Korea.

[23] After the release of Paul Fischer's book, A Kim Jong-Il Production, in 2015, the abduction of Shin Sang-ok and Choi Eun-hee piqued the interest of those outside Korea.

The French TV mini-series, Kim Kong, produced by Arte, written by Simon Jablonka and Alexis Le Sec, directed by Stephen Cafiero and starring Jonathan Lambert, is based upon these events.