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A River in Darkness by Masaji Ishikawa
A River in Darkness by Masaji Ishikawa





A River in Darkness by Masaji Ishikawa

One telling illustration involves the order to use Juche farming principles (an intensive factory style system) but it means the rice plants are placed so close together they cannot possibly survive. In a linear narrative, Ishigawa combines details of key episodes in his life with reflections on the challenges of living in a state ruled by one “invincible as steel” man Everyone in North Korea is brainwashed to believe Kim Il sung (and later his son Kim Jong il) know what’s best so they must follow their instructions even if the evidence indicates otherwise. But they dare not complain: “thought was not free,” and one injudicious word could get you killed. They live in pitifully inadequate housing, and his father ekes out an existence as a farm labourer. … I was told I’d been deemed hostile, and that was that.įor decades the Ishigawa family leave a precarious existence.

A River in Darkness by Masaji Ishikawa

But if you were deemed hostile you were the lowest of the low and would remain so for life. If you were deemed core, a rosy future awaited you. Your whole life was determined by which caste you’d been assigned to. But his ambition to go to university to study physics is dismissed as laughable.Īcademic achievements had nothing to do with it., no matter how excellent they were. He throws himself into his studies to overcome the “Japanese bastard” abuse thrown at him by other pupils. Ishigawa gets an early introduction to what will become the reality of his life. As Japan returnees they were viewed as the “lowest of the low,” in a society where an individual’s status determined their food allocation and where they could work and study.

A River in Darkness by Masaji Ishikawa

The promised free house, free education, good job and plentiful food never materialised.

A River in Darkness by Masaji Ishikawa

North Korea was nothing like they imagined. Boyed up by stories of how the, now independent state of North Korea, was a land of opportunity, Ishikawa’s father decided in 1960 to return to his motherland, taking his family with him. Masaji Ishikawa was born in Japan to a Japanese mother and a Korean father who’d effectively been kidnapped when Korea was annexed by Japan. And then attempted an extraordinary journey to escape a brutal dictatorship. But he will leave behind his family, uncertain if he will see them again.Ī River In Darkness is a terrifying account of how an ordinary man became an unwitting victim of a con trick. If he evades the guard patrols, and crosses the river, he will be one closer to returning to Japan, the land of his birth. Masaji Ishikawa’s memoir opens on a night when he stands at the edge of the Yalu river, waiting for the moment when it will be safe for him to cross.īehind him is North Korea, the country its leader has told him is “paradise on Earth” but which Ishikawa knows, from personal experience, is a hell hole.







A River in Darkness by Masaji Ishikawa