A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea
Masaji Ishikawa
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Masaji Ishikawa was born in 1947. His father was a Korean national residing in Japan. His mother was Japanese. In 1960, when he was thirteen years old, his family moved to the “promised land” of North Korea. In 1996, he made a desperate bid to escape from that hell on earth.
PROLOGUE
What do I remember of that night? The night I escaped from North Korea? There are so many things that I don’t remember, that I’ve put out of my mind forever . . . But I’ll tell you what I do recall.
It’s drizzling. But soon the drizzle turns to torrential rain. Sheets of rain so heavy, I’m soaked to the skin. I collapse under the shelter of a bush, utterly incapable of measuring the passage of time. I am weary to the core.
My legs have sunk into the mud, but somehow I crawl out from under the bush. Between the branches, I can see the Yalu River in front of me. But it’s changed—now totally unrecognizable. This morning, kids were wading in what was little more than a stream. But the cascading downpour has turned it into an impassable torrent.
Across the river, about thirty yards away, I can make out China, shrouded in mist. Thirty yards—the distance between life and death. I shiver. I know that countless North Koreans have stood here before me, gazing across at China under the cover of darkness, memories of the people they’ve just left behind swirling through their minds. Those people, like the ones I’ve left, were starving. What else could they do? I stare into the torrent and wonder how many of them succeeded.
Then again, what difference does it make? If I remain in North Korea, I’ll die of starvation. It’s as simple as that. At least this way there’s a chance—a chance I’ll make it, that I will be able to rescue my family or at least help them somehow. My children have always been my reason for living. I’m no use to them if I’m dead. But I still can’t believe what I’m about to do. How many days have passed since my decision to escape across the border and return to the country of my birth? I think it through.
Four days . . . It seems like a lifetime. Four days ago, I left my house. I looked into my wife’s face, my children’s faces, for what I knew could be the last time. I couldn’t let myself indulge in that kind of thinking, though. If I was going to have any chance of helping them, I had to leave while I still had the strength to escape. Or die trying.
And what have I eaten since? A few husks of sweet corn, kernels not included. An odd apple core. Some scraps I’ve scrounged from others’ trash.
I look for the guards I know are lurking every fifty yards or so on the riverbank. I’m prepared to die of utter exhaustion or to drown in my attempt to cross the river. But I won’t allow the guards to catch me. Anything but that. I plunge into the river.
The last words I spoke to my family still ring in my ears. If I succeed in escaping, somehow or other, no matter what it takes, I’ll get you there too.
CHAPTER 1
You don’t choose to be born. You just are. And your birth is your destiny, some say. I say the hell with that. And I should know. I was born not just once but five times. And five times I learned the same lesson. Sometimes in life, you have to grab your so-called destiny by the throat and wring its neck.
My Japanese name is Masaji Ishikawa, and my Korean name is Do Chan-sun. I was born (for the first time) in the neighborhood of Mizonokuchi in the city of Kawasaki, just south of Tokyo. It was my misfortune to be born between two worlds—to a Korean father and a Japanese mother. Mizonokuchi is an area of gently sloping hills that now grows crowded on the weekends with visitors from Tokyo and Yokohama seeking an escape from the city and some fresh air. But sixty years ago, when I was a child, it consisted of little more than a few farms, with irrigation canals that led from the Tama River running between them.
Back then, the irrigation canals were used not just for farming but also for household tasks like laundry and washing dishes. As a boy, I spent long summer days playing in the canals. I’d lie in a big washtub and float on the water all afternoon, basking in the sunshine and watching the clouds cross the sky. To my child’s eye, the slow movement of those drifting clouds made the sky look like a vast expanse of sea. I wondered what would happen if I let my body drift with the clouds. Could I cross the sea and reach a country I’d never known? Never even heard of? I thought of endless opportunities in my future. I wanted to help poor people—families like mine—become richer so that they could have the means to enjoy their lives. And I wanted the world to be peaceful. I dreamed one day that I would be the prime minister of Japan. How little I knew!
I used to climb a nearby hill and catch beetles in the early-morning dew. At festival time, I’d follow the portable shrine and the dance with the lion’s mask. All my memories are sweet. My family was poor, but my childhood days in Mizonokuchi were the happiest of my life. Even now, when I think about my hometown, I can’t stop the tears from welling up. I would give anything to go back to that happy time, to feel so innocent and full of hope once more.
On the outskirts of Mizonokuchi there used to be a village, home to two hundred or so Koreans. I found out later that most of them had been more or less dragged over from Korea—to work in the nearby munitions factory. My father, Do Sam-dal, was one of them. Born on a farm in the village of Bongchon-ri in what is now South Korea, he was commandeered—effectively kidnapped—at the age of fourteen and brought to Mizonokuchi.
But I didn’t even know I had a father until I started elementary school. I have no earlier memories of him whatsoever. In fact, I first became conscious of my father’s existence when my mother took me to a strange place, which I later discovered was a prison, to visit a man I didn’t recognize. That’s the day my mother told me who my father was. Eventually the man I’d seen through the window in the visitors’ room showed up at our house. He was notorious in the area for being a rough fellow, and our relatives shunned him.
He was hardly ever at home, but whenever he was there, he spent the better part of his time slugging back strong-smelling liquor. He could polish off a couple liters of sake in short order. What was worse, drunk or not, he’d hit my mother whenever he was at home. My sisters were so frightened, they used to cower in the corner. I tried to stop him by clinging to his leg, but he always kicked me away. My mother tried not to cry out, so she bore the pain with clenched teeth. I felt helpless and scared for her but could do nothing. As time went on, I just did my best to stay out of his way—which wasn’t hard since he never paid much attention to me. But it crossed my mind more than once that I’d come after him when I grew up.
My mother’s name was Miyoko Ishikawa. She was born in 1925. Her parents ran a shop on the corner of the ancient shopping street, where they sold chickens. My grandmother, Hatsu, ran the shop, and her work was difficult and dirty. The chicken meat wasn’t neatly cut up and packaged as it is today—nothing like that. Cages were strewn higgledy-piggledy in front of the shop, and when a customer appeared, my grandmother would remove a squawking chicken from its cage and slaughter it on the spot.