Review: A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea by Masaji Ishikawa

5 stars for A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea by Masaji Ishikawa.

I have heard of stories told about famine and starvation in North Korea. But it is only after reading this book that I realise how dire the situation was and in all likelihood still is. It is indeed an eye-opener, sadly, a very educational but disturbing true story about the conditions in North Korea that is bound to affect the psyche of any who reads it. You name it. The book has it.

Cruelty
Despair
Desperation
Exhaustion
Fear
Frustration
Hardship
Hopelessness
Oppression
Misery
Starvation

Masaji Ishikawa was born in Kawasaki, Japan in 1947 to a Korean father and Japanese mother. In 1960, at the age of thirteen, Masaji moved with his parents and three sisters to North Korea, where they were promised a new life in a paradise on earth. Instead, they were consigned to a living hell. In 1996, after thirty-six years of struggling to stay alive, Masaji made a desperate bid to escape from that impoverished hellhole that was North Korea. He currently resides in Japan.

This is his story.

I highly recommend this book to everyone. There is so much more in North Korea than nuclear weapons. It makes me appreciate my life and all that I have, right down to the very basic necessities that most of us take for granted. Perhaps because it is my first time reading on North Korea, one of the world's most brutal totalitarian regimes, Ishikawa's story leaves a deep impact and impression. Each time I am reminded of Ishikawa's life, the incredible hardship and starvation, I feel so blessed to be where I am and what I am today.


Publisher: Amazon Crossing; Reprint edition
Publication date: 26 Jun 2018

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Half-Korean, half-Japanese, Masaji Ishikawa has spent his whole life feeling like a man without a country. This feeling only deepened when his family moved from Japan to North Korea when Ishikawa was just thirteen years old, and unwittingly became members of the lowest social caste. His father, himself a Korean national, was lured to the new Communist country by promises of abundant work, education for his children, and a higher station in society. But the reality of their new life was far from utopian.

In this memoir translated from the original Japanese, Ishikawa candidly recounts his tumultuous upbringing and the brutal thirty-six years he spent living under a crushing totalitarian regime, as well as the challenges he faced repatriating to Japan after barely escaping North Korea with his life. A River in Darkness is not only a shocking portrait of life inside the country but a testament to the dignity—and indomitable nature—of the human spirit.

*Blurb from Goodreads*

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