This American Life

718: Same Bed, Different Dreams (2020)

2020-09-11 · 00:00 UTC ·This American Life ·48 min read

Brief

The episode opens with Ira Glass reflecting on the intimacy of presidential transitions - how incoming presidents must literally sleep in their predecessor's bedroom, using George H.W. Bush's gracious 1992 letter to Bill Clinton as an example of how far current political discourse has fallen from that standard of civility.

The first major story details one of the most bizarre kidnapping cases in modern history. In 1978, North Korean leader Kim Jong-il orchestrated the kidnapping of South Korean actress Choi Eun-Hee and director Shin Sang-Ok to improve his country's terrible film industry. Kim Jong-il, a movie obsessive who had built a massive bootlegging operation to acquire foreign films, held them captive for years while forcing them to make propaganda films. In a secretly recorded conversation, Kim admitted that North Korean cinema was kindergarten-level compared to other countries and that socialism provided no incentive for quality work. Ironically, the films Shin and Choi created accidentally exposed North Korean audiences to images of the outside world for the first time, undermining decades of state propaganda about their country being a paradise.

The second story examines the harsh realities of migrant labor through the lens of "shift beds" - shared sleeping arrangements where workers take turns using the same bed. At a New York dairy farm, up to 13 undocumented Mexican workers shared seven beds in a decrepit two-bedroom trailer, with one worker literally sleeping on a wooden plank over a bathtub. Despite working brutal hours (16-hour shifts three days a week, 8-hour shifts the other four, no overtime), the workers endured these conditions because they could earn more in one day than in a week back home. The story had real impact - after it aired, conditions improved dramatically with new housing and individual beds.

The final major segment tells the obsessive story of photographer Jessamyn Lovell, whose wallet was stolen at a San Francisco gallery. When identity thief Erin Hart was caught using her license, Lovell embarked on a years-long stalking campaign, hiring private investigators, tracking Hart to various locations, and eventually creating a gallery exhibit featuring surveillance photos of her thief. This behavior echoed Lovell's previous pattern of stalking her estranged father from a mile away using telephoto lenses, revealing how she used photography and surveillance as a way to regain control when feeling powerless.

Why it matters

This American Life explores stories of people forced together despite having completely different goals and dreams:

Key details

  • [historical] Kim Jong-il kidnapped South Korean actress Choi Eun-Hee in 1978 and director Shin Sang-Ok to improve North Korean cinema
  • [insight] Kim Jong-il admitted on secret recording that North Korean movies were terrible and socialism provided no incentive for quality
  • [claim] The films Shin and Choi made accidentally showed North Koreans the outside world for the first time, undermining state propaganda
  • [data] Migrant dairy workers in New York share beds in shifts - up to 13 people sharing 7 beds in a two-bedroom trailer
  • [conditions] Workers sleep in bathtubs, work 16-hour shifts 3 days a week plus 8-hour shifts 4 days, with no overtime pay
Cleaned source text

title: 718: Same Bed, Different Dreams (2020)

author: This American Life

content_type: podcast

publication: This American Life

published: 2020-09-11T00:00:00

source_url: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/718/same-bed-different-dreams-2020

word_count: 10768

Full episode

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Prologue: Prologue

Ira Glass

You know what's weird about the presidency? Or, you know, one of the things that's weird? They all have to live in the same house-- all the presidents. You ever think about that? OK, when you win the Super Bowl-- if the Patriots won the Super Bowl the previous year, you don't go and live in Bill Belichick's house. You don't drink coffee every morning in his kitchen, watch TV in his rec room at night. That would be strange. It's so personal living in somebody's space.

Think of President Trump. For so many years, he said Barack Obama shouldn't be president, said he wasn't born in the United States. He's still picking fights with Barack Obama today. There was that White House Correspondents' Dinner that Trump attended back when Obama was President.

Barack Obama

Donald Trump is here tonight.

Where Obama mocked him.

All kidding aside, obviously we all know about your credentials and breadth of experience.

[LAUGHTER]

For example-- no, seriously. Just recently in an episode of

Celebrity

Apprentice,

at the steakhouse, the men's cooking team

Then Trump wins the White House and moves in and has to sleep in Barack Obama's old bedroom, uses the same bathroom in the morning. And at least at the beginning, they must picture the previous guy there. Right? Now and then? OK, at least once? It's weird that we make the most powerful man in the world do this-- sleep in the bedroom of somebody he might hate, somebody he might really see as an enemy. But, you know, that's a peaceful transfer of power.

I hope it's not too partisan say a few kind words today about the peaceful transfer of power from one president to the next. We all still believe in that, right? Republicans and Democrats? We all stand by this basic principle of our Constitution and our democracy?

In 1992, Bill Clinton defeated the incumbent president, George HW Bush. Bush had to move out of the White House for the young president who'd sent him packing. Bush left this letter for Clinton in the Oval Office. It's been circulating around on the internet this week. The original is handwritten on White House stationery. It reads

"Dear Bill, when I walked into this office just now, I felt the same sense of wonder and respect that I felt four years ago. I know you will feel that too. I wish you great happiness here. I've never felt the loneliness some presidents have described. There will be very tough times made even more difficult by criticism you may not think is fair. I'm not a very good one to give advice, but just don't let the critics discourage you or push you off course.

You'll be our president when you read this note." He underlines the word "our." "I wish you well. I wish your family well. Your success now is our country's success. I'm rooting hard for you. Good luck. George."

I know two people who cried when they read that this week. That's how far that letter seems from the America we live in right now. I like it that we make the new president go and sleep in the bedroom of his vanquished rival. I like how intimate that is, you know? What's more intimate than your own bedroom? I think it underlines how we're all stuck with each other in this country, divided as we are, disagreeing so vehemently. It underlines how we can't get away from each other.

Today in our program, "Same Bed, Different Dreams," you'll hear stories of enemies sleeping together, or working together, or just stuck together in some way with very different hopes and goals. We have stories of deception and star-crossed haters. From WBEZ Chicago, this is

This

American

Life.

I'm Ira Glass. Stay with us.

Act One: Dream Weevil

Act One, "Dream Weevil." That title is going to make more sense as this story goes on. Just trust me on that.

In 1986, a man and woman ran into a US Embassy in Vienna and said they needed asylum. They were from South Korea. And they told embassy officials this incredible story of kidnapping, and intrigue, and being torn apart and thrown back together, and years of dreaming about escape from their kidnapper, while, at the same time, convincing their kidnapper that what they really wanted to do was stay with him. Nancy Updike has the story.

Nancy Updike

The woman who was kidnapped was a famous South Korean actress named Choi Eun-Hee. I read a book about it by a writer and film producer named Paul Fischer. He spent years researching this story.

Paul Fischer

She was compared, at the time, to Elizabeth Taylor.

Elizabeth Taylor. Imagine if Elizabeth Taylor, past her prime but still famous from all her iconic roles, had just disappeared one day. Choi was that beautiful, that much of an icon in South Korea, and she was gone. She found out pretty quickly who had arranged this.

When Choi was kidnapped in 1978, she was put on a boat, and the boat went to Namp'o Harbor in North Korea. And she actually has a photo, which is in the book, of her very first meeting with Kim Jong-il. He was there waiting for her off the boat with a photographer. And he had his photographer take a photo and then send it to her as a sort of

You'll want to remember this.

Exactly. Remember that time.

Remember that time I had you kidnapped and brought to me?

And it's a terrible picture. And he's beaming and smiley, and she's got her face covered.

For years, her family and her country didn't know where she was. This happened in 1978. Choi was in her 50s. And her first sickening guess as to why she'd been taken was that Kim Jong-il had brought her to North Korea to be a mistress for his father, the Great Leader, Kim Il-sung, who was ruling the country at the time.

But no, it seemed that Kim Jong-il himself was just a very big fan of Choi's movies. He put her up in a fancy villa, surrounded by walls and barbed wire and armed guards. She called it, in her memoir, "Las Vegas meets Vladivostok." Kim Jong-il brought her out to display at parties. That was Choi's life for five years, until one particular night and one special party.

Choi had been there for a while. And she was standing somewhere in the center of the room.

And she was used to these parties by this point.

Exactly. They were routine. She'd started feeling repulsed by them. People got drunk and groped women, and then they went on forever. And somebody had already told her that, this is going to be such a great evening for you. And she nodded along, because she was used to hyperbole about everything.

Choi had no idea that Kim Jong-il that night was planning to show off, for the first time, another person he had acquired, the man who had directed or produced almost all of Choi's movies, her ex-husband, Shin Sang-Ok. Shin and Choi each didn't know that the other was also in the country. Shin had been brought the same way Choi was. But he tried to escape twice, so he was thrown in a prison camp for a couple of years.

The best way to describe Shin-- Steven Spielberg's a good comparison, in a sense, as well. He made films that were very good, very commercial, very popular. And he also produced other people's films, had his own studio. And he was the most powerful, popular filmmaker in South Korea-- arguably, in all of Southeast Asia-- for most of the '60s and into the '70s.

And Shin-- 10 days prior to this, he was still in a prison camp-- got released. And for 10 days in a villa, they fattened them up, tried to restore him to health. He arrives at the party when it's already in full flow. And he walks inside, and as soon as he enters, there's applause.

What an insane thing. 10 days ago, you're in a prison camp. You walk in, and you're the life of the party. Everyone's applauding.

Exactly. And in the pictures, his face still looks emaciated. You can tell he's just gone through something terrible. The suit doesn't fit.

Now Choi doesn't see Shin come in. She just hears people start applauding.

And Choi is sort of even unfazed by this. Anytime Kim does anything, people get up and applaud.

So she didn't know why people were applauding. She had no idea.

Exactly. Until somebody says, why don't you look happy? Look who's here. And she turns around. And it's been five years. Shin's got the marks of having been tortured in a prison camp. She doesn't recognize him right away.

And from that point on, Kim Jong-il was pulling them together. And they, sort of shell shocked, hugged one another, and then were then moved around, like blocking in a movie scene, by Kim Jong-il.

What, like stand here, sit here?

Stand here. You stand next to me. Smile to the cameras. They were sort of the guests of honor.

Famous people don't get to pick their fans. Kim Jong-il was a superfan who was also, unfortunately, the son of the all-powerful leader of a totalitarian state. Shin and Choi had made their best movies together. Kim loved their movies, and he wanted them to be a couple, just like they were in their heyday. So he arranged it,

Parent

Trap

style.

He told them at the party that, guess what, he had a newly remodeled villa for them that they would be living in from now on-- together.

Making a joke, I think he said something like, the newlyweds are going to want to be alone now.

What a weirdo.

And had them taken to a car, and by all accounts, seemed extremely pleased and expected them to be equally so. And it's the moment right after that when they went back to the villa, closed the bathroom door, turned the faucets on

In order to talk privately. They turned the faucets on so they can whisper and actually have a private conversation.

Exactly. And they just asked one another what had happened.

The way she describes it is sort of a lovely moment, where she asks him, what happened to you? And he said, a lot. I'll tell you some other time. And he asks her, what happened to you? And she says, a lot. I'll tell you some other time.

And you know, Shin kind of gingerly, again, asked her, you know, you looked very smiley and happy. And I just-- have you been brainwashed? And she made a joke about how the director couldn't even recognize acting anymore. And both of them were finally able to be genuine with someone. And they spent the next several hours going through everything.

Shin and Choi made a long-term plan and a short-term plan. Long-term, they were going to escape. But they would wait till they could do it right so they wouldn't be caught. Their short-term plan involved a small tape recorder, which they were able to get, because one of the weird privileges of their captivity was that they were allowed to shop at a department store that sold things that were out of reach for most people in the country, like tape recorders.

Kim Jong-il had long- and short-term plans of his own for them. He told them that soon he would summon them to talk about his vision for their future. Then seven months went by.

And during those months, Shin and Choi spent hours nearly every week in Kim's huge film archive. He wanted Shin and Choi to see it and be impressed, and they were. Kim didn't just love their movies. He loved all movies.

It was against the law for ordinary North Koreans to watch foreign films. But Kim had set up a massive bootlegging operation running in countries all over the world so he could build up his private collection with every movie ever made, or as close as he could get. The archive was three stories high and heavily guarded-- at least two screening rooms, all for Kim only, and now for Shin and Choi. Shin was bowled over by every detail.

The way the building itself was set up to run, and with admiration over how Kim had set up his own archive and how well everything was kept, geeking out over the air conditioning settings and how he was preserving the celluloid, and how everything was cataloged, then the staff, and then how large it was.