But to night Kim was preoccupied. He was thinking about motion pictures.

After the party, in the early hours of the morning, a handful of people would follow Kim, an insomniac, to one of his projection rooms and watch one of the new movies produced by the state-run studios. Over the last decade he had found the work of his film crews increasingly repetitive and dispiriting. These films were unlikely to hold the attention of his people for much longer, let alone impress the world abroad, which was his lifelong ambition. They were simply not good enough. Not yet, anyway. Four years earlier he had put in action a plan to remedy this problem, but that plan had stalled. He had treated his guests, Shin Sang-Ok and Choi Eun-Hee, so well, but they seemed determined not to play along.

For now. Less than six months later, Shin would surrender to Kim's plans.

And together, they would change the course of North Korean history.

Excerpted from A Kim Jong-Il Production by Paul Fischer. Copyright © 2015 by Paul Fischer. Excerpted by permission of Flatiron Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.