Another Boring Topic

In 1983 the US home game console market collapsed, contracting around 93 percent and putting dozens of major companies out of business. The conventional wisdom was that the home game console market was finished, and would never rise again. But a century old Japanese company that was originally founded to manufacture and sell playing cards thought otherwise. Their name was Nintendo and their successful reinvigorating of the US game console market with the 1985 American release of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is a fascinating tale of shrewd business practices, a willingness to defy expectations, and a company that wasn't afraid to try new things.

The story of how North Korea forced a kidnapped director to make what was essentially a Godzilla film, even including basically kidnapping the team that made Godzilla's special effects to work on the film, starts back in 1978. In 1978, Kim Jong-Il, the designated successor to the dictator of North Korea, Kim Il-Sung, was overseeing North Korea's film production. Wishing to improve the quality of the films his directors and actors were producing, he decided to kidnap one of the South Korea's most famous directors, Shin Sang-ok, along with one of South Korea's most famous actresses, Choi Eun-hee (Shin's ex-wife), and force them to make movies in North Korea. They were trapped in North Korea for seven years before managing to escape by fleeing to the American embassy in Vienna, narrowly escaping their North Korean guards. But before they were able to escape, they created one of the most famous pieces of cinema ever to come from North Korea.