On March 6, 1983, famed Korean film director Shin Sang-ok was brought to a banquet hall where, as he entered, he was caught off guard by thunderous applause. As he nervously sought out his host, his eye met another guest — Choi Eun-hee, Korea’s most famous actress, and Shin’s ex-wife.

At first, the pair just stared at each other, not sure what to do or say, until their host, sporting a mischievous grin, broke the ice.

“Well, go ahead and hug each other! Why are you just standing there?”

The pair embraced, first awkwardly, then emotionally, sinking into each other’s arms. The room erupted into cheers.

Until 10 days prior, Shin had spent years as a prisoner, forced to sit cross-legged and head bowed, completely still, for 16 hours a day, under threat of even harsher punishment if he so much as flinched. Walking into the banquet room, he hadn’t seen his ex-wife in five years, and was not even certain she was still alive.

Their jovial host, the man who arranged this unexpected reunion, was Kim Jong-il, North Korea’s Dear Leader, and the man who had, years earlier, arranged for the two biggest film stars in South Korea to be separately kidnapped, imprisoned, and re-educated in the ways of his country — which meant, by and large, learning to worship the Kim family without question.

Now, under his watchful (and forceful) eye, the two stars and former lovebirds were reunited for what he saw as a great cause. Thanks to his efforts, this couple was about, he hoped, to make North Korea a powerhouse in the world of cinema.

“A Kim Jong-Il Production,” a new book by Paul Fischer, tells the bizarre story of how Kim kidnapped Shin and Choi, then two of the most famous people in South Korea, and forced them to make films for North Korea instead.

Kim fell in love with film at an early age. His father, Kim Il-sung, believed that film was his most important tool for indoctrinating his people, and placed the film industry under government control.

The younger Kim lost his mother at an early age, and his memory of watching movies with her helped bond him to the art form.

Growing up, he spent long days and nights watching every film in the government archives, and once he was done with those, he set up an elaborate film pirating operation involving all the North Korean embassies around the world, which would request films for private screenings, copy them, and then send them to Pyongyang in diplomatic pouches. As a result, Kim amassed one of the largest film archives — perhaps the largest — in the world.

He watched them all.

Placed in charge of the country’s film efforts at 25, the movies he produced in the coming years were drenched in ideology, as, whatever his artistic ambitions, indoctrination was the primary goal. But in the late 1960s, having immersed himself in American movies, he increased the quality of his country’s films exponentially, producing — in a hands-on fashion that included input in screenwriting, casting, and editing — films that earned respect not only in North Korea, but in China and at foreign film festivals.

These films helped position Kim Il-sung as a god figure within North Korea, and earned the young man his father’s trust in a way that hadn’t existed before, helping pave young Kim’s path to eventually becoming his father’s successor. (Kim Jong-il was initially considered third in line, after his uncle and older brother.)

But despite his knowledge and ambition, Kim knew that his country’s cinematic efforts paled compared to those of other countries.

He devised a plan to make North Korea’s film industry one of the world’s finest.

In the early 1960s, Shin was the Steven Spielberg of South Korea, creating films that broke all box office records, and Choi, his wife, was the nation’s highest-paid and best loved actress.

Their fortunes had changed, though, by the late ’70s. Choi, now 50, was on the downside of her acting career, and Shin Films, due to changing tastes and Shin’s open flaunting of government regulations, had closed. Plus, an affair of Shin’s produced a child, and Choi, after 22 years of marriage, asked for a divorce.

As bad as things had become for the pair, they were about to get much, much worse.

In 1977, Choi was sent a script from someone in Hong Kong, asking if she might consider directing. Intrigued, she agreed to meet the man. It was a ruse. She was forcibly taken onto a boat, and kidnapped to North Korea.

She spent the next several years as a “guest” of Kim Jong-il, living in luxury villas, spending her days being indoctrinated in the ways of the Kims, and “partying” at luxury banquets where Kim would hold court, ordering subordinates to dance and drink as he saw fit.

She had no idea why she had been taken, and her purpose there became even more mysterious when Kim casually mentioned one night, without elaboration, that “Director Shin” would soon be joining them. Unbeknownst to Choi, her ex-husband suffered the same fate sometime after her.

But Shin would have a far harder road to reconciliation. While initially given similar treatment to Choi’s, he made two escape attempts, and was caught both times. After the second, he was sent to one of the country’s notorious prisons, where he spent 16 hours a day in the torture position — seated straight up, head bowed, no movement allowed — for two-and-a-half years.

He was released on February 23, 1983, told he had been forgiven for his crimes by Kim, and that in return, he would devote himself to serving the Great Leader.

His shocking reunion with his ex-wife took place 10 days later, at which time Kim announced that the famed couple would be married on April 15, the birthday of the Great Leader.

Shin and Choi were taken to a newlywed suite. Guessing that their room was bugged, they spoke of their situation only in the bathroom with the tub water running, or on walks outside.

Still in love, they became a couple again, and agreed that in time, they would escape.

Kim had told Shin that he would form a new film company with “the whole of the national industry at their disposal.” Kim would have to approve the film’s subjects, but beyond that, Shin would be given free reign to write, cast, and shoot however and wherever he saw fit.

While establishing a new film complex, Shin and Choi also focused on escape. Having purchased a small tape recorder (their new status in Kim’s favor allowed them the rare privilege of shopping freely), they intended to tape Kim talking about their kidnapping as proof, when they eventually returned home, that they were victims, not defectors.

In the conversation they caught on tape, later authenticated by the CIA, Kim was shockingly open with the couple about the failures of North Korean socialism, telling them, “there is a real problem in socialism: no incentive for success.”

Establishing an international film presence would require that the couple travel to other countries to seek financing, film at exotic locations, and hopefully present their movie at festivals. For Kim, this travel brought the added benefit of showing the world how free North Koreans really were. (Except, of course, for handlers watching their every move.)

Shin and Choi hoped this would also put them in position to escape.

From 1983-1986, Shin and Choi — who worked on many aspects of these productions in addition to her acting — made seven North Korean films.

Together, these films elevated North Korean cinema, as they were considered the greatest movies in the country’s history, and left Kim beaming with pride.

Their first two films, writes Fischer, were “nationalistic” in the North Korean tradition. But then they were allowed to branch out in ways few would have expected, including producing “a lighthearted romantic melodrama, ‘Love, Love, My Love’ (which contained ‘the first on-screen kiss in the country’s history’); a social-realist tragedy, ‘Salt’; an extravagant musical reminiscent of Busby Berkeley, with fantasy creatures, expensive costumes, and underwater scenes, ‘The Tale of Shim Chong’; and North Korea’s first martial arts action film, ‘Hong Kil-Dong.’ ”

Shin’s final North Korean film was “Pulgasari: The Iron-Eater,” a take on “Godzilla,” created with the actual Japanese effects team from some of the “Godzilla” films, and the actor who had most recently worn the Godzilla suit in those films.

Fischer characterizes it as Shin’s worst, comparing it to Ed Wood’s infamous “Plan 9 from Outer Space,” but Kim and his subjects felt differently. Crowds were so anxious to see the film that they stampeded theaters, resulting in several deaths, and Kim believed that “Pulgasari” was just the blockbuster to catapult North Korea’s film industry to the next level.

The trailer for “Pulgasari” in 1985.

Following this, Kim assigned Shin to find Austrian backing for a film version of the life of Genghis Khan.

This gave Shin and Choi, for the first time, the chance to travel together to a country outside the Eastern bloc. If they had any hope of escaping, this was it.

They checked into Vienna’s Intercontinental Hotel Wien — a hotel well-known as a spot for defections — on March 12, 1986, accompanied by three of Kim’s elite bodyguards. Usually, their bodyguards either stayed with them or in adjoining rooms, but here, their rooms were too small, and no adjoining rooms were available. They took this as a good sign.

They arranged a meeting with a Japanese journalist friend named Akira Enoki, having convinced their minders that an article in a Japanese newspaper would show the world their creative independence — a display that would be thwarted if they were perceived as being monitored. Their minders agreed to trail behind.

Before the meeting, they asked a Japanese-speaking man from the hotel’s front desk to come to their room. Once inside, they told him they were seeking asylum in the US, and asked him to alert the embassy. They then called Enoki, and told him to meet them outside with a taxi waiting.

At 12:30 pm, they walked outside, found their friend, and pushed him into the taxi. They told the driver to just drive, and explained the situation to Enoki. Their minders, watching them drive away, rushed to hail a cab of their own.

As they drove, the minders in the car behind them, Shin and Choi frantically tried to determine the next step when, in a stroke of luck, their taxi just made a green light, leaving their handlers stranded at a red.

“Before Enoki could say anything the taxi’s radio crackled and the dispatcher’s voice asked the driver which way they were headed, so he could tell the other taxi in their ‘convoy,’ ” writes Fischer.

Thinking fast, Enoki shoved a wad of bills into the driver’s hand, and instructed him to tell the dispatcher they were headed in the other direction. After he did so, Shin and Choi, barely containing their nervous excitement, belted out, “US Embassy!”

Five minutes that seemed like five hours later, the taxi reached the embassy, and Shin and Choi made a run for it. An American told them that “he had been expecting them, but not this soon.”

Their North Korean nightmare was over. Shin and Choi were free.

Fearing retribution from Northern agents in South Korea, they were taken to America, but never really fit in. Shin struggled to return to film, and despite some mild success, including creating the “3 Ninjas” franchise for Disney, he never came anywhere close to the victories of his past. After several years, they returned to South Korea.

Shin died in 2006. Choi is now 88 and confined to a wheelchair but, writes Fischer, still exhibits much of the same spirit that once caused two separate nations to fall in love with her.

Fischer asks her about her husband, whose autobiography, titled “I Am Film,” gave the impression that his devotion was to film first and her second, even writing that, as Fischer puts it, he would “happily sell his wife to another man if doing so helped him make a film.”

Given all they endured together, Choi knows better.

“His passion for the movies and his passion for me,” she says, “were the same.”