A Kim Jong-Il Production
The Extraordinary True Story of a Kidnapped Filmmaker, His Star Actress, and a Young Dictator's Rise to Power
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Narrated by:
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Stephen Park
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By:
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Paul Fischer
About this listen
Before becoming the world's most notorious dictator, Kim Jong-Il ran North Korea's Ministry for Propaganda and its film studios. Conceiving every movie made, he acted as producer and screenwriter. Despite this control, he was underwhelmed by the available talent and took drastic steps, ordering the kidnapping of Choi Eun-Hee (Madam Choi) - South Korea's most famous actress - and her ex-husband Shin Sang-Ok, the country's most famous filmmaker.
Madam Choi vanished first. When Shin went to Hong Kong to investigate, he was attacked and woke up wrapped in plastic sheeting aboard a ship bound for North Korea. Madam Choi lived in isolated luxury, allowed only to attend the Dear Leader's dinner parties. Shin, meanwhile, tried to escape, was sent to prison camp, and "re-educated". After four years he cracked, pledging loyalty. Reunited with Choi at the first party he attends, it is announced that the couple will remarry and act as the Dear Leader's film advisors. Together they made seven films, in the process gaining Kim Jong-Il's trust. While pretending to research a film in Vienna, they flee to the U.S. embassy and are swept to safety.
A nonfiction thriller packed with tension, passion, and politics, A Kim Jong-Il Production offers a rare glimpse into a secretive world, illuminating a fascinating chapter of North Korea's history that helps explain how it became the hermetically sealed, intensely stage-managed country it remains today.
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Throughout the late 1970s and early '80s, dozens of Japanese citizens were abducted from coastal Japanese towns by North Korean commandos. In what proved to be part of a global project, North Korea attempted to reeducate the abductees and train them to spy on the state's behalf. When the project faltered, the abductees were hidden in a series of guarded communities known as "Invitation-Only Zones" - the fiction being that these were exclusive enclaves, not prisons.
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Over enthusiastic reader!
- By AJW on 02-14-16
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See You Again in Pyongyang
- By: Travis Jeppesen
- Narrated by: Will Collyer
- Length: 12 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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From terrifying missile tests, its unmissable Olympic cheering squad, and the war of words between President Trump and Kim Jong Un - not to mention stranger-than-fiction stories of purges and assassinations - news from North Korea has dominated global headlines. But what is life there actually like? In See You Again in Pyongyang, Travis Jeppesen, the first American to complete a university program in North Korea, culls from his experiences living, traveling, and studying in the country to create a multifaceted portrait of the country and its idiosyncratic capital city.
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Save me from the hippie millennials with a PhD
- By Verified purchaser on 06-21-18
By: Travis Jeppesen
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The Great Escape
- Nine Jews Who Fled Hitler and Changed the World
- By: Kati Marton
- Narrated by: Anna Fields
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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The stunning story of the breathtaking journey of nine extraordinary men from Budapest to the New World, what they experienced along their dangerous route, and how they changed America and the world. In a style both personal and historically groundbreaking, acclaimed author Kati Marton (born in Budapest) tells the tale of their youth in Budapest's Golden Age of the early 20th century, their flight, and their lives of extraordinary accomplishment, danger, glamour, and poignancy.
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very interesting, well-narrated
- By D. Littman on 12-17-06
By: Kati Marton
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Hanns and Rudolf
- The True Story of the German Jew Who Tracked Down and Caught the Kommandant of Auschwitz
- By: Thomas Harding
- Narrated by: Mark Meadows
- Length: 8 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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May 1945: In the aftermath of the Second World War, the first British War Crimes Investigation Team is assembled to hunt down the senior Nazi officials responsible for the greatest atrocities the world has ever seen. One of the lead investigators is Lieutenant Hanns Alexander, a German Jew who is now serving in the British Army. Rudolf Höss is his most elusive target. Hanns and Rudolf reveals for the very first time the full, exhilarating account of Höss' capture, an encounter with repercussions that echo to this day.
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I Read This Marvelous Book...
- By Douglas on 01-04-14
By: Thomas Harding
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Rosewater - Previously Published as 'Then They Came For Me’
- By: Maziar Bahari, Aimee Molloy
- Narrated by: Stephen Hoye
- Length: 11 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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When Maziar Bahari left London in June 2009 to cover Iran's presidential election, he assured his pregnant fiancée, Paola, that he'd be back in just a few days, a week at most. Little did he know, as he kissed her good-bye, that he would spend the next three months in Iran’s most notorious prison, enduring brutal interrogation sessions at the hands of a man he knew only by his smell: Rosewater.
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Book that would've shined but for the narration
- By loix on 06-24-11
By: Maziar Bahari, and others
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Raven
- The Untold Story of the Rev. Jim Jones and His People
- By: Tim Reiterman
- Narrated by: Mitch Horowitz
- Length: 29 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Tim Reiterman's Raven provides the seminal history of the Rev. Jim Jones, the Peoples Temple, and the murderous ordeal at Jonestown in 1978. This PEN Award-winning work explores the ideals gone wrong, the intrigue, and the grim realities behind the Peoples Temple and its implosion in the jungle of South America.
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What a very thoroughly written book!
- By Traci P. on 04-22-17
By: Tim Reiterman
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The Train to Crystal City
- FDR's Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and America's Only Family Internment Camp During World War II
- By: Jan Jarboe Russell
- Narrated by: Andrea Gallo
- Length: 14 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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The dramatic and never-before-told story of a secret FDR-approved American internment camp in Texas during World War II, where thousands of families - many US citizens - were incarcerated.
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I didn't know...
- By Graham Emslie on 02-27-17
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Limonov
- The Outrageous Adventures of the Radical Soviet Poet Who Became a Bum in New York, a Sensation in France, and a Political Antihero in Russia
- By: Emmanuel Carrère, John Lambert - translator
- Narrated by: Vikas Adam
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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This is how Emmanuel Carrère, the magnetic journalist, novelist, filmmaker, and chameleon, describes his subject: "Limonov is not a fictional character. There. I know him. He has been a young punk in Ukraine, the idol of the Soviet underground; a bum, then a multimillionaire's butler in Manhattan; a fashionable writer in Paris; a lost soldier in the Balkans; and now, in the fantastic shambles of postcommunism, the elderly but charismatic leader of a party of young desperadoes."
By: Emmanuel Carrère, and others
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My Song
- A Memoir
- By: Harry Belafonte, Michael Shnayerson
- Narrated by: Harry Belafonte, Mirron Willis
- Length: 19 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Harry Belafonte is not just one of the greatest entertainers of our time; he has led one of the great American lives of the last century. Now, this extraordinary icon tells us the story of that life, giving us its full breadth, letting us share in the struggles, the tragedies, and, most of all, the inspiring triumphs.
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Amazing
- By Khafre on 12-30-11
By: Harry Belafonte, and others
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Lenin's Tomb
- The Last Days of the Soviet Empire
- By: David Remnick
- Narrated by: Michael Prichard
- Length: 29 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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In the tradition of John Reed's classic Ten Days That Shook the World, this best-selling account of the collapse of the Soviet Union combines the global vision of the best historical scholarship with the immediacy of eyewitness journalism.
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The moral complexity of a comic book
- By Tot on 02-22-19
By: David Remnick
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The Last Palace
- Europe's Turbulent Century in Five Lives and One Legendary House
- By: Norman Eisen
- Narrated by: Jeff Goldblum
- Length: 15 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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When Norman Eisen moved into the US ambassador’s residence in Prague, returning to the land his mother had fled after the Holocaust, he was startled to discover swastikas hidden beneath the furniture in his new home. These symbols of Nazi Germany were remnants of the residence’s forgotten history, and evidence that we never live far from the past. From that discovery unspooled the twisting, captivating tale of four of the remarkable people who had called this palace home. Their story is Europe’s....
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Great book despite goldblum’s narration
- By Fernando Ferrante on 01-19-19
By: Norman Eisen
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Nothing to Envy
- Ordinary Lives in North Korea
- By: Barbara Demick
- Narrated by: Karen White
- Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Barbara Demick's Nothing to Envy follows the lives of six North Koreans over fifteen years - a chaotic period that saw the death of Kim Il-sung and the unchallenged rise to power of his son, Kim Jong-il, and the devastation of a far-ranging famine that killed one-fifth of the population. Taking us into a landscape never before seen, Demick brings to life what it means to be an average Korean citizen, living under the most repressive totalitarian regime today.
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The man who wants to be GOD
- By Gohar on 05-08-10
By: Barbara Demick
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Dreamers and Deceivers
- True and Untold Stories of the Heroes and Villains Who Made America
- By: Glenn Beck
- Narrated by: Jeremy Lowell
- Length: 9 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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The new nonfiction from number-one best-selling author and popular radio and television host Glenn Beck.
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Astounding History stories gather life
- By Gil on 11-13-14
By: Glenn Beck
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The Return
- Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between
- By: Hisham Matar
- Narrated by: Hisham Matar
- Length: 8 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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When Hisham Matar was a 19-year-old university student in England, his father was kidnapped. One of the Qaddafi regime's most prominent opponents in exile, he was held in a secret prison in Libya. Hisham would never see him again. But he never gave up hope that his father might still be alive. "Hope," as he writes, "is cunning and persistent." Twenty-two years later, after the fall of Qaddafi, the prison cells were empty, and there was no sign of Jaballa Matar. Hisham returned with his mother and wife to the homeland he never thought he'd go back to again.
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Touching memoir. Consider hard copy
- By Joschka Philipps on 02-22-18
By: Hisham Matar
What listeners say about A Kim Jong-Il Production
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Sharon
- 09-26-16
Fascinating!!!
A very interesting story, that I think was enhanced by the audible experience. It is a fascinating story.
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- TIMOTHY RICE
- 08-29-22
an entire nation brainwashed
this book was very enlightening about the lives of the people of North Korea. it was interesting to see how the entire nation had been brainwashed to believe that everyone except for themselves was in worse shape than they were. it was interesting to see how bad their gulags or prisons were how much the prisoners were persecuted torture everyday how they were not only humiliated but so much so that they had they lost hope and everything. but not only that how to know song or whatever his name is how he was so corrupt and how he spent so much money when his people were starving how he really did not care about his people all he wanted was their praise. the story was very nice it was interesting to see how they finally did escape but to me the story of how the North Koreans were and how they were treated and how they were brainwashed and how the entire nation was put on spectacle for the rest of the world is what I really believe the story was about.
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- Margaret Weinert
- 12-31-23
Excellent
The person who recommended this book to me described it as “a La Carre thriller, but true and bizarre”.
Excellent from start to finish.
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- Paul Bogle
- 11-21-20
More Amazing and Inspiring Than You Can Imagine
This kept me wanting to come back to pick up where I left off. A fantastic balance of true-life drama and historical context. The story itself builds effortlessly into suspense and ends perfectly with a touching and humanizing denouement.
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- Abdel-Rahman
- 08-30-17
Slow Narration
Narration is pretty slow so you'll need to listen to it at 1.5x the normal speed, at least. But everything else is pretty good.
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- Gennaphyr
- 05-30-15
Fascinating read
Where does A Kim Jong-Il Production rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
It was my first audiobook!
Who was your favorite character and why?
Probably Kim Jong Il himself,
What does Stephen Park bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
He did a wonderful job. I guess one thing would be I wouldn't have known how to pronounce the Korean names and places.
Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
No it didn't make me laugh or cry, however, it did make me want to learn more and read more books about North Korea.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Stars482
- 04-10-16
Absolutely incredible.
Fascinating and terrifying. Insightful and well-researched. What a story!!! Also, I learned a lot about Korean name pronunciation from the excellent narrator. Listen now!
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- robert
- 11-29-17
accurate
This is a very balanced look at a high profile kidnapping. The good and bad traits of the "dear leader" are explained in all their glory. It's nothing new, but worth a listen. Methinks the poor ratings are from Pyongyang.
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- dreamsgirl
- 02-03-16
Thrilling true story!
Enjoyed all aspects of the book. Very interesting and engaging. Written well and good narrator.
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- Kindle Customer
- 02-28-15
Interesting
Moved along pretty well, and kept me interested. I will probably look for more books about North Korea now.
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3 people found this helpful