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murfmonkey 's review for:
A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea
by Masaji Ishikawa
“You don’t choose to be born. You just are. And your birth is your destiny, some say. I say the hell with that. And I should know. I was born not just once but five times. And five times I learned the same lesson. Sometimes in life, you have to grab your so-called destiny by the throat and wring its neck.”
Thus begins the story of Masaji Ishikawa’s life, and what a story it is. Born in Japan to a Japanese mother and Korean father, for reasons which Mr. Ishikawa never fully understands, his father moves them from Japan to North Korea in pursuit of a better life! Things go downhill from there.
The book is—as the reader might imagine—one long litany of suffering and deprivation, hopelessness and starvation. Surely North Korea ranks right up there as one of the worst places on earth, especially if when you arrive, you are assigned to the lowest class of North Korean, as Mr. Ishikawa’s family was. I found myself dumbfounded that his Japanese mother would go along at all, but go she did, and suffered along with everyone else.
Mr. Ishikawa’s first meal in North Korea? Dog meat. Sad to say, but as the years pass and the starvation begins, Mr. Ishikawa no doubt would have been overjoyed to have a meal of dog meat, rather than subsisting on acorns and weeds as was necessary for his family.
The book is quite remarkable due to its insights into totalitarian regimes. He writes:
“I soon learned that thought was not free in North Korea. A free thought could get you killed if it slipped out.”
“When you find yourself caught in a crazy system, dreamed by dangerous lunatics, you just do what you’re told.”
We see Mr. Ishikawa’s despair as he slowly realizes what his father’s choices have meant for his life: “I knew that I was destined for a life of hell on earth, and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.” And so he was.
In totalitarian regimes “Language gets turned on its head. Serfdom is freedom. Repression is liberation. A police state is a democratic republic.”
Mr. Ishikawa eventually escapes from North Korea, but is powerless to help his family who remained in country. His wife starves to death. One of his daughters starves to death. He loses contact with another daughter and his son. It’s a sad, tragic, awful tale, that is a good example of man’s inhumanity to man.
Thus begins the story of Masaji Ishikawa’s life, and what a story it is. Born in Japan to a Japanese mother and Korean father, for reasons which Mr. Ishikawa never fully understands, his father moves them from Japan to North Korea in pursuit of a better life! Things go downhill from there.
The book is—as the reader might imagine—one long litany of suffering and deprivation, hopelessness and starvation. Surely North Korea ranks right up there as one of the worst places on earth, especially if when you arrive, you are assigned to the lowest class of North Korean, as Mr. Ishikawa’s family was. I found myself dumbfounded that his Japanese mother would go along at all, but go she did, and suffered along with everyone else.
Mr. Ishikawa’s first meal in North Korea? Dog meat. Sad to say, but as the years pass and the starvation begins, Mr. Ishikawa no doubt would have been overjoyed to have a meal of dog meat, rather than subsisting on acorns and weeds as was necessary for his family.
The book is quite remarkable due to its insights into totalitarian regimes. He writes:
“I soon learned that thought was not free in North Korea. A free thought could get you killed if it slipped out.”
“When you find yourself caught in a crazy system, dreamed by dangerous lunatics, you just do what you’re told.”
We see Mr. Ishikawa’s despair as he slowly realizes what his father’s choices have meant for his life: “I knew that I was destined for a life of hell on earth, and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.” And so he was.
In totalitarian regimes “Language gets turned on its head. Serfdom is freedom. Repression is liberation. A police state is a democratic republic.”
Mr. Ishikawa eventually escapes from North Korea, but is powerless to help his family who remained in country. His wife starves to death. One of his daughters starves to death. He loses contact with another daughter and his son. It’s a sad, tragic, awful tale, that is a good example of man’s inhumanity to man.