A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea

When we sat or lay down, we were so bony, it hurt. Even when we were sleeping, it was so painful, we woke up constantly.

After the Korean War, China and North Korea had a “friendship signed in blood” in which they agreed to a “Border Security Cooperation Protocol.” Fancy words for a simple process: if you escaped from North Korea but your luck ran out and you got caught, you were sent back. Cue the firing squad. As for South Korea, trade with China was all that matte

The town of Hyesan is famous for its coalfields and copper mines. About twelve miles northeast of Hyesan, there’s an area called Pochonbo, famous for a battle that took place there in 1937. The Koreans were attempting to push the Japanese occupiers out of their country, and the Anti-Japanese Guerrilla Corps, allegedly commanded by Kim Il-sung, beat

The Yalu River separates China and North Korea. A lot of people cross over it, and even more try to. Bizarrely, some thirty years earlier, many Chinese Koreans and Chinese had tried to escape to North Korea during China’s “Great Leap Forward” and Cultural Revolution, that country’s own attempt at mass starvation. Now the whole migration had been th

I learned that after high school graduation in North Korea, there were three paths to choose from. Except there weren’t. In reality, your path was chosen for you. Basically, if you were clever and your birth and background were good enough, you were sent to university. If you were physically strong, you went to the military academy or became a comm

Some people complained about Kim Il-sung and what he’d gotten us into. But nobody spoke of changing the system. They were too scared of the police and the secret police. Did anyone even try to topple the leadership? No. They did what they were told to the bitter end. After all, they’d been brainwashed since they were schoolchildren. We were taught

After the death of Kim Il-sung, everything ground to a halt. Farming. Industry. Everything. No raw materials of any kind got delivered to the factory. We had only a few hours of electricity, if we were lucky. Production gradually sputtered out. Workers collapsed on the floor before my eyes, weak with hunger.

As you question whether they could really have been so completely brainwashed, keep in mind that North Koreans had never experienced a liberal democracy. They had no concept of what it was or what it meant. My comrades had only ever known or heard of colonial rule at the hands of Japan and dictatorship at the hands of Kim Il-sung. And before that w

Hamhung is an industrial city with terrible pollution and the most appalling smog I’d ever seen.