![]() ![]() The author’s mother (and the author, himself) didn’t want to leave Japan because she didn’t speak the language and was ethnically Japanese (putting her in the minority shoes.) Little could any of them have known how bad life in North Korea would be, and how dire a mistake it was to agree to the move. ![]() ![]() The author’s father was eager to get out of Japan because he was treated as minorities frequently are – especially ones as rough around the edges as he, and so he swallowed the propaganda of Kim Il Sung’s regime hook-line-and-sinker. ![]() As it happens, Ishikawa’s father was from South Korea, but – in the wake of the Korean War - it was North Korea that was looking for rank-and-file laborers. During the Second World War, Japan had imported labor from Korea for the war effort. This tragic memoir tells the story of a man of mixed Japanese – Korean heritage who was, as a boy, moved to North Korea under a “repatriation” program that was designed to provide North Korea with laborers while conveniently reducing a minority problem for the Japanese. A River in Darkness: One Man’s Escape from North Korea by Masaji Ishikawa ![]()
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