Asia is not usually high on my list of interests. I have always wanted to visit Japan (likely linked to my dad’s serving as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints there) and I’ve always wanted to visit the famous sights in China. I once had the opportunity to visit Bangkok, and while I enjoyed it, it was very different from anything I had ever experienced before. I don’t know a lot about the region in general, but have never been a big fan of North Korea. Once European Communism fell in the late ’80s and early ’90s, places like Cuba and North Korea have seemed like time warps, holding out unnecessarily while continuing to oppress people. When people make the decision to try to leave those places, I always find it to be one I can sympathize with.
A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea by Masaji Ishikawa (ISBN: 978-1-5420-4719-7) is just such a tale, although it does have an interesting twist. The author was not born in North Korea; in fact, he was born in Japan and was ethnically half Japanese. His dad, who was not native to Japan, moved his family to North Korea under pressure from ethnic compatriots and the pressure of being an ethnic minority in re-building, post-war Japan, where such minorities weren’t always welcome. The promises of the Communist utopia were very quickly discovered to be a total sham by the author and his family. However, there was no real opportunity to get out. The author's family had nothing to offer the Communist Party, so they lived as peasants, eventually finding that living under the radar of the authorities was easier than trying to conform to the system in North Korea. Eventually, Ishikawa tires of the poverty, starvation, racism, hypocritical inequality, and lack of freedom. He heads toward the border with China, fearful, but determined to make a break for it since, although that would mean an uncertain future, it was better than the future he could easily predict inside North Korea. He made it to China, eventually linking up with the Japanese embassy there, which, with great difficulty, helped exfiltrate him to Japan. Once back, Japan had jumped forward forty or so years, while North Korea had steadily gone backward. Ishikawa struggled to adjust and felt abandoned by Japan.
The book was interesting, but disheartening. Ishikawa's childhood is not an easy one, with alcohol abuse and physical abuse having large roles. The move to North Korea is understandable only from his father's point of view. Once there, even his father grows disillusioned with their new country, but like so many people in totalitarian, socialist regimes, he never felt empowered or free enough to do anything about his situation. North Korea is bleak from the family's arrival to the very last page of the book. The descriptions of life there are simple, yet vivid and powerful. Readers are drawn in to the dark, gloomy, depressing lives of the underclass in North Korea. In a way, it like reading Dostoevsky, but it was real. The story of the escape was a breath of fresh air and involved some risks, risk-takers, and genuinely good people. Movement between Japanese diplomatic facilities and the flight to Japan have a spy story quality to them. Ishikawa's return to Japan and struggle to fit in again returns the reader to the more depressing side of the book. What is clear by the end of the book is that North Korea is an anachronism and deserved its place on George Bush's “axis of evil.” The book, like other, similar memoirs, serves as a warning against the lack of freedoms engendered by socialist governments everywhere and the positive, although imperfect, results of the free market and capitalism.
A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea by Masaji Ishikawa (ISBN: 978-1-5420-4719-7) is just such a tale, although it does have an interesting twist. The author was not born in North Korea; in fact, he was born in Japan and was ethnically half Japanese. His dad, who was not native to Japan, moved his family to North Korea under pressure from ethnic compatriots and the pressure of being an ethnic minority in re-building, post-war Japan, where such minorities weren’t always welcome. The promises of the Communist utopia were very quickly discovered to be a total sham by the author and his family. However, there was no real opportunity to get out. The author's family had nothing to offer the Communist Party, so they lived as peasants, eventually finding that living under the radar of the authorities was easier than trying to conform to the system in North Korea. Eventually, Ishikawa tires of the poverty, starvation, racism, hypocritical inequality, and lack of freedom. He heads toward the border with China, fearful, but determined to make a break for it since, although that would mean an uncertain future, it was better than the future he could easily predict inside North Korea. He made it to China, eventually linking up with the Japanese embassy there, which, with great difficulty, helped exfiltrate him to Japan. Once back, Japan had jumped forward forty or so years, while North Korea had steadily gone backward. Ishikawa struggled to adjust and felt abandoned by Japan.The book was interesting, but disheartening. Ishikawa's childhood is not an easy one, with alcohol abuse and physical abuse having large roles. The move to North Korea is understandable only from his father's point of view. Once there, even his father grows disillusioned with their new country, but like so many people in totalitarian, socialist regimes, he never felt empowered or free enough to do anything about his situation. North Korea is bleak from the family's arrival to the very last page of the book. The descriptions of life there are simple, yet vivid and powerful. Readers are drawn in to the dark, gloomy, depressing lives of the underclass in North Korea. In a way, it like reading Dostoevsky, but it was real. The story of the escape was a breath of fresh air and involved some risks, risk-takers, and genuinely good people. Movement between Japanese diplomatic facilities and the flight to Japan have a spy story quality to them. Ishikawa's return to Japan and struggle to fit in again returns the reader to the more depressing side of the book. What is clear by the end of the book is that North Korea is an anachronism and deserved its place on George Bush's “axis of evil.” The book, like other, similar memoirs, serves as a warning against the lack of freedoms engendered by socialist governments everywhere and the positive, although imperfect, results of the free market and capitalism.
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