A River in Darkness summary

Between the late 1950s and mid-1980s, over 100,000 Koreans and 2,000 Japanese citizens left Japan aboard ships bound for North Korea. It’s a remarkable chapter in history. It was the first – and remains the only – time such a large number of people left a capitalist country for a socialist one.

But the emigrants were soon confronted with plenty of evidence that this so-called “paradise on earth” wasn’t all that it’d been cracked up to be.

The first sign came when they docked. The arrivals – Ishikawa’s family among them – were shocked at how poorly attired the North Koreans helping unload the ship were. Their clothes suggested that the locals were poorer than they’d ever been in Japan.

Their first meal was another red flag. They were given terrible-smelling dog meat. Hardly anyone in their group managed more than a mouthful.

Ishikawa’s family spent the next week confined in a small, cold room before being assigned to their future home in the village of Dong Chong-ri.

It was a pretty out-of-the-way spot, but the family didn’t have connections in the Korean Workers’ Party or the League of Koreans. Knowing the right people was the only way of securing a residence in the capital of Pyongyang, where the best opportunities could be found.

Things didn’t improve when they arrived in their new home, either. Their neighbors regarded them as Japanese. Discrimination was commonplace.

Take Ishikawa’s first school day. One of his classmates called him a “Japanese bastard” as soon as he entered the classroom. Other students made snide remarks about his fancy watch and bag.

Such items were uncommon in North Korea, and most students usually wrapped their belongings in a cloth that they carried with them. Ishikawa quickly learned to do the same.

But he wasn’t the only family member struggling to fit in. His mother had studied mathematics and worked as a nurse – but this didn’t impress the village’s party officials. They refused to give her a job until she learned Korean.

Not having anything else to do, she wandered the mountains looking for things she could pick and cook later. That helped supplement the meager diet the family could afford on the small salary Ishikawa’s father earned as a farmer.