The cinematography HAUNTED BY HISTORY, curated by Gerwin Tamsma, explores the “Korean Gaze” on the Japanese colonial era (1910 - 1951). It comprises 12 films made in the decades after the Korean War (1950 - 1952) up to the 2000s: Melodramas, horror films, documentaries, gangster films and so-called “folk erotica” films.
One of the films in the program, SANGNOKSU (EVERGREEN TREE) by director Shin Sang-ok, is also linked to a wild kidnapping story that came to a spectacular end in room 911 of the Hotel InterContinental Wien, the Viennale Festival Hotel. Tamsma tells the story in the video HERE:
Mysteriously, Shin had been kidnapped by North Korean agents together with his muse and ex-wife Choi Eun-hee in 1978: They were to make future films for the cinephile dictator Kim Jong-il, long a fan of Shin's. In the course of this work, Shin and Choi were able to travel to festivals with their films, once even via Vienna, where they were accommodated in room 911 of the “Interconti”. In a careless moment on the part of their guards, they managed to hail a cab, which in a wild chase through Vienna at night actually took them to the US embassy, from where Shin Sang-ok and Choi Eun-hee were able to flee.