Masaji Ishikawa
Memoirist and North Korean defector
Masaji Ishikawa is a Japan-born memoirist who lived in North Korea for 36 years before escaping in 1996. He wrote A River in Darkness.
1 summary 17 min of listening
Born in Kawasaki, Japan
About Masaji Ishikawa
Masaji Ishikawa was born in 1947 in Kawasaki, Japan, to a Korean father and a Japanese mother. The 13-year-old went to North Korea in 1960 together with his parents and his three sisters. The family had been promised a better life, but found themselves living under a totalitarian state. Ishikawa stayed until 1996, when he escaped by crossing the Yalu River and later returned to Japan, with help from the Japanese government in leaving China. He wrote the memoir A River in Darkness.