Masaji Ishikawa > Quotes

“And I came to recognize that, no matter how difficult the reality, you mustn’t let yourself be beaten. You must have a strong will. You have to summon what you know is right from your innermost depths and follow it.”
― Masaji Ishikawa, A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea

“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.”
― Masaji Ishikawa, A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea

“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.”
― Masaji Ishikawa, A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea

“But that’s the trouble with propaganda. It constantly contradicts itself.”
― Masaji Ishikawa, A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea

“When you find yourself caught in a crazy system dreamed up by dangerous lunatics, you just do what you’re told.”
― Masaji Ishikawa, A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea

“Someone once said, “If a crying baby could tear down the universe, it would.” That’s how I felt that day. I wanted to demolish the whole universe, but the sad truth was, it had already come crashing down around my head.”
― Masaji Ishikawa, A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea

“I don’t think I ever felt as close to her as I did that night. Her desperation, her fear, her exhaustion—all of it seeped through her thin clothes and straight into my heart.”
― Masaji Ishikawa, A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea

“This was laughable, of course, but that’s always the way with totalitarian regimes. Language gets turned on its head. Serfdom is freedom. Repression is liberation. A police state is a democratic republic. And we were “the masters of our destiny.” And if we begged to differ, we were dead.”
― Masaji Ishikawa, A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea

“If you suffer long enough, it almost becomes funny, and you can find yourself laughing at the most miserable situations. I guess it’s a kind of hysteria.”
― Masaji Ishikawa, A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea

“In the West, I guess you’d call it corruption. In North Korea, it was just standard operating procedure.”
― Masaji Ishikawa, A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea

“If you suffer long enough, it almost becomes funny, and you can find yourself laughing at the most miserable situations.”
― Masaji Ishikawa, A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea

“The party started churning out more slogans, more propaganda. I couldn’t help but wonder where they even got all the paper for the posters—and whether I could eat it”
― Masaji Ishikawa, A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea

“When I lived in Japan, I never really pondered my life. But after I moved to North Korea, the thing that preoccupied me most was the sheer magnitude of the difference between my old life and my new one. I became obsessed with all the things I had taken for granted before, and all the hardships that marked my life now. But that didn’t last long. I soon learned that thought was not free in North Korea. A free thought could get you killed if it slipped out.”
― Masaji Ishikawa, A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea

“We were taught that the United States brutally slaughters our brothers and sisters in the south. That we must free the people of South Korea. That their country is occupied by the enemy, the United States.”
― Masaji Ishikawa, A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea

“Sometimes we burst out laughing like raving lunatics. If you suffer long enough, it almost becomes funny, and you can find yourself laughing at the most miserable situations. I guess it’s a kind of hysteria.”
― Masaji Ishikawa, A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea

“Eventually, they forced her and his two kids—his two kids, mind you, from his first wife who had died—out of the house.”
― Masaji Ishikawa, A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea

“The vicious sound of his voice as he ranted at our mother. The sound of his hitting her. The sound of his trying to stifle her tearful cries.”
― Masaji Ishikawa, A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea

“You don’t choose to be born. You just are. And your birth is your destiny, some say. I say the hell with that.”
― Masaji Ishikawa, A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea

“But if you admitted you bathed frequently, you were equally told off,”
― Masaji Ishikawa, A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea

“Did the International Committee of the Red Cross know anything about this? Did the United States? The UN? Yes, yes, and yes. And what did they do about it? Nothing.”
― Masaji Ishikawa, A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea

“You don't choose to be born. You just are. And your birth is your destiny, some say. I say the hell with that. [...] Sometimes in life, you have to grab your so-called destiny by the throat and wring its neck”
― Masaji Ishikawa, A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea

“What were you thinking? A man whose quality of life is no better than that of a beggar! Who in their right mind would marry me? It had been laughable to think Su-yon’s mother would ever give her consent.”
― Masaji Ishikawa, A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea

“I even heard a rumor of one man killing his wife and eating her.”
― Masaji Ishikawa, A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea

“The three castes were “nucleus” (or “core”), “basic” (or “wavering”), and “hostile.” Three criteria determined your caste: your birth and background, your perceived loyalty to the party, and your connections. Academic achievements had nothing to do with it, no matter how excellent they were. Your whole life was determined by which caste you’d been consigned to. If you were deemed “core,” a rosy future awaited you. But if you were deemed “hostile,” you were the lowest of the low and would remain so for life. No career path. No chance of bettering yourself. No way out.”
― Masaji Ishikawa, A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea

“When you’re starving to death, you lose all the fat from your lips and nose. Once your lips disappear, your teeth are bared all the time, like a snarling dog. Your nose is reduced to a pair of nostrils. I wish desperately that I didn’t know these things, but I do.”
― Masaji Ishikawa, A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea

“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.”
― Masaji Ishikawa, A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea

“From time to time, a hygiene outfit carried out a lice check at school. If you were dirty, you got told off for poor hygiene. But if you admitted you bathed frequently, you were equally told off, in this case for “Japanese decadence.” As usual, you couldn’t win.”
― Masaji Ishikawa, A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea

“Ever since setting foot in North Korea more than thirty years before, I’d known nothing but hunger. Everyone had been halfway to starvation for decades. But things had taken a turn for the worse starting in 1991. From 1991 until Kim Il-sung’s death in 1994, extremely cold weather wreaked havoc on the fragile food supply.”
― Masaji Ishikawa, A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea

“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.”
― Masaji Ishikawa, A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea

“The most important thing was how faithful you were to the Great Leader. Teachers and every other adult I knew tried to brainwash us into becoming slavish members of their pseudo-religious cult. I played along. I learned quickly that in that sort of situation, if you want to survive, you have to stifle your critical faculties and just get on with things. I had to pick my battles carefully and not let myself get riled up by every little thing. But the trouble is that some people really do end up brainwashed.”
― Masaji Ishikawa, A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea