WASHINGTON, D.C. — Filmmaker Shin Sang Ok and his wife, actress Choi Eun Hee, herald a life story more dramatic than any of their screenplays. Hailed the “Prince and Princess of Korean Cinema” following Korea’s liberation from Japan in the 1940s, the pair revolutionized the South Korean movie industry with new shooting techniques and raised eyebrows with their depiction of women’s struggles in a staunchly Confucian Korea over the next two decades. Had there been teen magazines during those post-War years, their pinups would have been found inside.

Then, just as the administration of Park Chung Hee, the heavy-handed president of South Korea at the time, threatened to shut them down in the 1970s, the couple’s career was given an odd jump-start. They were abducted by arguably one of their biggest fans: film aficionado and future leader of communist North Korea, Kim Jong Il. Following nearly five years of imprisonment and “re-education,” Shin and Choi were invited to re-invent the North Korean entertainment industry, wined and dined by Kim Jong Il and given free reign to produce seven full-length features, ranging from dramas to epics to campy comedy, all laced with subtle threads of propaganda.

Shin Sang Ok and Choi Eun Hee were feted by fans at the fifth annual Korean Film Festival in Washington, D.C., where a few of their films were screened.

In 1986, when the couple was sent on tour of various European film festivals as North Korean representatives, the pair fled Kim Jong Il’s guardsmen and found their way through the gates of the American Embassy in Vienna. They were granted asylum in the United States and eventually relocated to Los Angeles, where Shin joined the ranks of Disney as a producer.

Both in their late 70s now, Shin and Choi still appear as dapper as ever. As special guests of the fifth annual Korean Film Festival in Washington, D.C., they met with fans — mostly middle-aged Korean couples and film students — at the Smithsonian’s Freer Sackler Gallery on Oct. 14. On this particular day, he’s in a slim-fitting dark navy suit and patterned silk scarf; she in all black with a classy gold brooch. Both wear tinted, dark-rimmed glasses. Recent liver surgery keeps Shin from the movie set right now, but fans hope for his imminent return, the most popular request being a film rendition of the couple’s life story. It’s said that the hearts of young men across Korea were broken when the couple first married half a century ago, and the sentiment seemed to ring afresh as the couple were brought on stage.

Shin Sang Ok and Choi Eun Hee were feted by fans at the fifth annual Korean Film Festival in Washington, D.C., where a few of their films were screened.

During the screening of “The Houseguest and My Mother,” KoreAm caught up with the film legends to hear more of their story.

LEADING WOMEN, LEADING MEN

When Shin Films was first founded in the 1940s in the wake of Korea’s independence from Japan, feature-length films were shot using the news cameras that the Japanese left behind, army trucks served as limousines and “catering” consisted of ramen lunch bowls. Fifty years later, actresses are much better equipped to do their jobs, and the Princess of Korean cinema tipped her hat to these rising stars, saying their performances often outshine her own.