A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea
I became obsessed with all the things I had taken for granted before, and all the hardships that marked my life now. But that didn’t last long. I soon learned that thought was not free in North Korea. A free thought could get you killed if it slipped out. If you were lucky, you might get sent to some remote mountainous region to do hard labor.
Masaji Ishikawa • A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea
As the ship edged closer to the quay, I saw that the players were all schoolgirls. Although it was midwinter, they wore little more than the thin jacket of the Korean national costume. The sharp wind blew in my eyes. Then I took a second look. Their faces. Their phony smiles. You must have seen them on TV. Those grotesque displays of schoolgirls—au
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One thing this book talk a lot about, but can never definitively answer, is how people born in N. Korea feel about the brainwashing vs. people who come from outside the country (as the narrator of this tale does). A telling fact is that there is never, in 30+ years of living in N. Korea, a heart to heart conversation outside of family that questions the lies that are being peddled by the Dear Leader and his designates. The system is so all-encompassing, and there is such desperation, you either pretend to go along, or you get disappeared or further marginalized.
The system was known as the “feasibility concept.” Feasibility concept! That’s what happens to language in countries like North Korea. A totalitarian dictatorship is a “democratic republic.” Bondage is known as “emancipation.”
Masaji Ishikawa • A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea
Reminds me of this book, which blew my mind in college:https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/264894.Upside_Down
The consul’s wife gave me one of the consul’s suits to wear. It was a beautiful garment. I’d never worn anything like it. Honestly, I’d never even seen anything like it. Though I realized later that it was not particularly stylish or top-of-the-line, to me, it felt like putting on a prince’s garb. After I got changed, she gave me a bag with some ot
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These moments are magical, and a welcome respite from the vicious grinding in the rest of the book.
That’s when the real fun began. Crippling gut pain that brought us to our knees; constipation that you wouldn’t believe. When the pain became unbearable—there’s no delicate way of putting this—you had to shove your finger up your anus and scoop out your concrete shit. I’m sorry. You didn’t need to know that. Except you did. It’s the only thing that
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Reminder: Take a pass on the pine tree bark.
Some people complained about Kim Il-sung and what he’d gotten us into. But nobody spoke of changing the system. They were too scared of the police and the secret police. Did anyone even try to topple the leadership? No. They did what they were told to the bitter end. After all, they’d been brainwashed since they were schoolchildren. We were taught
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The cost of disinformation is total. A healthy reminder in our present fact-free regime.
We rarely witnessed or experienced any real humanity or warmth in our daily life. Everyone was always thinking of themselves—how to get ahead, pretending to care about the party, watching their own backs, scrambling for food, and using cigarettes and alcohol as bribes to get in with people who had power. To be fair, it was the only way to survive.
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A powerful thought in the midst of a complete system of dehumanization.
During the period of the Japanese Empire, thousands upon thousands of Koreans had been brought to Japan against their will to serve as slave laborers and, later, cannon fodder. Now, the government was afraid that these Koreans and their families, discriminated against and poverty-stricken in the postwar years, might become a source of social unrest
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After traveling in S. Korea and Japan, it's clear that the stereotypes and animosity over some of these age-old antagonisms are still perpetuated (hopefully to a lesser degree than they once were).
Soldiers and members of the Youth League were sent to work on farms just twice a year, but the real farmers had to work under these ridiculous conditions all the time. They knew that, however long they worked and however much effort they put in, they wouldn’t be rewarded for their labors; their pay would be the same. And they had to follow the inst
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The absurdity of these policies knows no bounds. There's always these power-plays that are demonstrably harmful at every level of the society.