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

Masaji Ishikawa,

Risa Kobayashi (Translator)

Start date: February 1, 2019

Finish date: February 28, 2019

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What Members Thought

Apr 19, 2018 Diane Zwang rated it really liked it

Shelves: nonfiction, memoir, poverty, north-korea

I downloaded this book for World Book Day 2018.

This book is about much more than one man's escape from North Korea. As Masaji introduces himself in the book, he tells us he was born to a Japanese mother and a Korean father. Much of his childhood is complicated by these two cultures. Koreans were not welcomed in Japan before or after World War II. Masaji's childhood was also complicated by family abuse. His father abused his mother physically until she left one day. Then his father's girlfriend a ...more

3 likes · Like · see review

Feb 27, 2019 Celia rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2019-read, ten-year-challenge, kindle-list, reading-the-world-read, well-read-world-lit, translated, bios-memoirs, non-fiction, reading-the-wrld

I have never been so happy to finish a book. This story is full of sadness, hunger (like in starvation) and death. I just could not take any more.

The author, Masaji Ishikawa was born in 1947 in Kawasaki, Japan. He then moved with his parents and three sisters to North Korea in 1960 at the age of thirteen, where he lived until his escape in 1996.

Background: The Japanese defeat in World War II left 2.4 million Koreans stranded in Japan. They belonged to neither the winning nor the losing side, an ...more

3 likes · Like · see review