A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea

by Masaji Ishikawa

Sometimes in life, you have to grab your so-called destiny by the throat and wring its neck.

If someone hit you, you didn’t turn the other cheek. You hit them back. Twice as hard.

There’s a saying, “Sadness and gladness follow each other.” As I see it, people who experience equal amounts of sadness and happiness in their lives must be incredibly blessed. Some people lead a painful life full of nothing but sorrow. I should know.

These weren’t the wrinkles of old age; they were wrinkles of pain.

If you suffer long enough, it almost becomes funny, and you can find yourself laughing at the most miserable situations.

A doctor who didn’t help people was worse than useless—he was a mockery of everything he stood for.

I lit a cigarette and placed it on her grave instead of incense.

In the West, I guess you’d call it corruption. In North Korea, it was just standard operating procedure.

I’m sorry. You didn’t need to know that. Except you did. It’s the only thing that shows how desperate we were.

Now I have just one thing left. My only true possession. I’m sorry to say that it’s bitterness. Bitterness at the cruelty of life.

I’d lost not only my country, but also my birthplace. And so here I remain, in a place where I don’t belong.

When I’m eating something considered a basic food in Japan—far simpler than anything most Japanese people eat, plain rice, let’s say—I look at it and wonder how many meals it would provide in North Korea. And not just how many meals, but how many days of meals. The trouble is, such thoughts make it impossible for me to eat because my heart swells with grief. So when I feel that way, do you know what I do? I go to the ocean and toss the rest to the seagulls. I want to give this food to my family in North Korea. But I can’t. So I entrust it to the seagulls. And in my heart, they carry it off to my family. And I weep.