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eveofrevolution 's review for:
A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea
by Masaji Ishikawa
This is an incredibly tragic memoir. Obviously, given the subject matter, it was bound to be, but JESUS. It was very eye-opening, as you hear about how terrible North Koreans have it, but to see it in these (sometimes graphic) words is something else.
The book was mostly a linear timeline, but it jumped forward quite a lot, and there were times when 10 years had gone by without really being described, so it was sometimes hard to keep up with about what year it was. I also noticed some translation/editing mistakes, such as his wife's name being Kim Te-sul and most of the time, he refers to her as Te-sul, but one time referred to her as Kim, which didn't make sense. Also, in the epilogue, something got messed up because it says "The last letter I received from Myong-hwa came in the autumn of 2005," he responded, then later he "received a letter from Ho-son" in response to that letter. The next sentence says "I last heard from Ho-son in 1998." There were a few other parts of the translation that threw me off, but those two were the only ones that really changed the meaning of what was being portrayed.
Overall, this was a very insightful book and I think is a really important story, because for all the talk about how horrible living in North Korea is, this really paints a very clear picture of it.
The book was mostly a linear timeline, but it jumped forward quite a lot, and there were times when 10 years had gone by without really being described, so it was sometimes hard to keep up with about what year it was. I also noticed some translation/editing mistakes, such as his wife's name being Kim Te-sul and most of the time, he refers to her as Te-sul, but one time referred to her as Kim, which didn't make sense. Also, in the epilogue, something got messed up because it says "The last letter I received from Myong-hwa came in the autumn of 2005," he responded, then later he "received a letter from Ho-son" in response to that letter. The next sentence says "I last heard from Ho-son in 1998." There were a few other parts of the translation that threw me off, but those two were the only ones that really changed the meaning of what was being portrayed.
Overall, this was a very insightful book and I think is a really important story, because for all the talk about how horrible living in North Korea is, this really paints a very clear picture of it.