A New York Times bestseller and Amazon Charts Most Read and Most Sold book.A Goodreads Choice Award nominee for Memoir & Autobiography.The harrowing true story of one man’s life in—and subsequent escape from—North Korea, one of the world’s most brutal totalitarian regimes.Half-Korean, half-Japanese, Masaji Ishikawa has spent his whole life feeling like a man without a country. This feeling … 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.
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Masaji Ishikawa was born in 1947 to a Japanese mother and a Korean father. In Japan, they were discriminated against and seen as second class citizens.
In 1960, the family were one of many who relocated to North Korea with promises of work and a university education for their children. The reality was somewhat different.
The home they were allocated had no running water, no electricity and food was only given to those who found work. The elderly and sick who could not work, were given no rations. Farm workers were forced to plant crops of rice close together, despite many knowing that this was poor practice. Disobedience was not tolerated.
The author and his family continued to be seen as second class citizens, and endured numerous further hardships. The descriptions of their suffering is truly harrowing. He and his family were eventually reduced to gathering acorns and weeds for food.
In 1996, he left his wife and children behind to escape to China, in the hope of bringing them on afterwards to a new and better life.
The kindness of strangers in China, with the help of the Japanese government, allowed him to secretly return to Japan. Although, his story does not have a happy ending, it gives an insight into life in North Korea and the endurance of the human spirit.
Compulsively readable and heart-wrenching, A River in Darkness reveals the daily cruelty of North Korea’s government to its poorest people. In this memoir, the victim is a young Japanese-born Korean who settles in the North with his parents, only to endure privation and abuse, as those he loves die of exhaustion, hunger, and loss of hope.
Beautifully written, quite literary, yet a very interesting and easy read. This book makes very clear the nature of the North Korean regime.
10/13/21 – A story so hard to believe you want to forget it actually happened. An interesting look at how the North Korean government lured people in and then proceeded to strip them of all basic human necessities. The courage of the author is amazing, especially when faced with such continued hardships.
A heartbreaking portrayal of what life in an autocratic is like for the average person. Really puts into perspective our everyday gripes.
A look into life in North Korea
A scary look into how North Korea operates. How some of their people live and survive and how one man escaped to a better life.
It is hard to imagine the life he led while living in N Korea.
This book will remain with me for the rest of my life! The Horrors of this man’s life are unexplainable and I hope that I never have to live in the world this dark!
A glimpse of the realities of living and escaping from North Korea.
Well written and harrowing story of repatriation to North Korea and subsequent escape. Illustrates well the horrific conditions of citizens of North Korea
This is a book I couldn’t put down. His life is an amazing and terrifying journey.
What a hauntingly stunning piece of work. This was by far an eye-opening read. A River in Darkness by Masaji Ishikawa is a poignant, timely, riveting memoir that truly makes you reevaluate your life. I will say though, this was extremely short and had a very abrupt ending — which made me rather disappointed.
When Ishikawa was 13-years-old his family moved from Japan to North Korea. His father was a Korean national and was lured to the country by his friends, he was promised work, food and free education for his children — essentially a land of paradise. They were all in for a horrible awakening when they arrived in this new communist nation.
From starvation, violence and even concentration camps — Ishikawa describes his difficult upbringing and the grueling hardships he and his family faced over thirty-six years. When it becomes too much, seeing his family on the cusp of dying from starvation, he decides to escape the country and make his way back home to Japan where he can send for help.
Ishikawa’s memoir is beyond heartbreaking, it is blunt and makes the reader really face the idea of what we should be grateful for. One part that really stayed with me was the description of the people dying of starvation:
“Every day was like living in a nightmare. It sounds dreadful to say, but I grew immune to the horror of all the people lying in the streets. Sometimes, I couldn’t tell whether they were dying or already dead. And the awful thing was, I didn’t have the energy to care.”
I will have to admit, without spoiling the ending, it did end very abruptly and really didn’t come to a full close. After discussing this at my Girly Book Club meeting, we found the author, Masaji Ishikawa, under a new South Korean name on Facebook. He is still alive and promoting his book. One of the girls at the meeting told us she did some more digging and found out Ishikawa’s younger sister had escaped to Japan, after this book was published, but didn’t like it. She went back to North Korea and became a spy. Those little details made me feel better. But quite honestly, I feel like there should have been an epilogue that allowed for a better closure on his story.
A River in Darkness by Masaji Ishikawa is definitely a book people should read if you’re interested in Asia but also history and current events. It was an eye-opening experience to learn so much about North Korea and the tremendous hardships the people face. It was quite a riveting book, but it also had some problems that I wish could be fixed.
Read my full review here: https://bit.ly/2TkiI59
The writing was not particularly good for a novel (more like someone’s diary or a letter to a friend) but the story was compelling. On the other hand, it was difficult to believe that someone could live in such conditions for so long without striking out, dying or attempting to escape. The ending is unexpected but not surprising.
Man’s inhumanity to man…
This book details the author’s early life in Japan, his parent’s decision to move to North Korea in 1960, his life of poverty in North Korea (including the starvation years of the 1990’s), and his escape back to Japan in 1996. The book covers a history I was unfamiliar with, how North Korean operatives with the full cooperation of Japan lied to and strongly pressured Koreans in Japan (and the Japanese citizens they were married to,) to relocate to North Korea. Be forewarned, this book is extremely depressing, even more so than other North Korean books I’ve read–quite possibly because it is the escapee himself telling the story, and not an author relating someone else’s story. The main issue with this book, is that it seems like there is a lot left untold. For example, it’s mentioned that the author’s mother was told she would be able to return to Japan to visit 3 years after relocating. The author never clarifies if this was a complete lie or a result of a policy change on North Korea’s part, nor how did his mother react when she learned this. Another example is that the author’s 1st wife decided to leave him (and abandon their child she was pregnant with) after seeing him passed out and covered in blood from a broken eye vein. It just seemed like there had to be more to that story, and there were several stories like that, where it felt like the author was leaving out important details/back-story. The author states in the book that the Japanese government begged him not to disclose that they had helped him with his escape, he also stated in the book that he wouldn’t out of gratitude to them. Yet obviously he decided to disclose that fact anywhere, yet he never gives his reasoning behind his deciding to make the disclosure. There is an epilogue for the book that briefly touches on his life in Japan and the family he left behind in North Korea. It would have been nice if the epilogue had been a complete chapter on it’s own, instead of just glossed over. There is no date on the epilogue, but it does appear to be from ~2000, it would be nice if the author could have updated it with more recent details (ie the rescue and failed rescue of family members which I learned about elsewhere.) Overall, the author tells a very compelling story, and it leaves one feeling deeply his resentment and depression over everything he lost.
Fascinating true story of one man’s effort to evangelize in North Korea and the resulting struggles he faced. An eye opener to any missionary visiting a communist country or closed society and the challenges one might face.
I have read several escape-from-North-Korea books. In all of the ones I read before this one, there was some description of the hard life in the north, the harrowing escape, and then a substantial description of the adjustment period in the free world. Two elements make this one different: first, the author’s homeland was a Japanese citizen who lived his firs 15 years in japan; second, his parentage was half Japanese and half Korean. These make the dynamics of the tale heartrending in a much different way. It gave me an insight into a set of circumstances I had never considered. The ending left me stunned.
P.S. I had previously read Pachinko, which provided a deeper understanding of Japanese attitudes toward its citizens of Korean heritage.
Powerful insight into a personal view of Kim Il Um’s North Korea!
Paints a picture of poverty and despair deeper than I have every read or seen before. It is well written by a non-native speaker who lived the terror. Once one reads it one wonders how North Korea has existed this long and why anyone would bother “negotiating” with the madmen at the top. Truly this is not a functioning society and but hell on earth demonstrating man’s inhumanity to man.