1986 while on a trip to Vienna, where they fled to the U.S. embassy and requested political asylum. They lived in Reston, Virginia, then Beverly Hills, California, before returning to South Korea in 1999. On April 16, 2018, Choi died in hospital where she was due to have a kidney dialysis during the afternoon. Her death resulted in widespread mourning across South Korea. In media In 2015, film producer and writer Paul Fischer released an English-language biography of Choi's and Shin's lives titled A Kim Jong-Il Production: The Extraordinary True Story of a Kidnapped Filmmaker. In January 2016, at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, in the World Cinema Documentary Competition, a documentary about the North Korean ordeal, entitled The Lovers and the Despot, directed by Robert Cannan and Ross Adam, was presented. Select filmography Awards Buil Film Awards Blue Dragon Film Awards Grand Bell Awards Other awards Bibliography See also Abduction of Shin Sang-ok and Choi Eun-hee Shin Sang-ok References Works cited Further reading External links Choi Eun-hee at Korean Movie Database 1926 births 2018 deaths 20th-century South Korean actresses Kidnapped South Korean people South Korean Roman Catholics North Korean abductions People from Gyeonggi Province People from Gwangju, Gyeonggi