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

profligacy.

Kim Chan-bon character and Kim Il-sung had been brothers-in-arms. Kim Chan-bon had become a powerful figure in the party and the author of some major military innovations. Everyone around me kept dwelling on that, but it still didn’t explain what he was doing in our village with his merry band of men.

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

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.

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.

In the end, all that mattered was whether our loyalty toward Kim Il-sung appeared credible. So we became masters at faking it. Everyone did. To do anything else could have gotten us killed.

As returnees grew wealthier, the party’s attitude toward them changed. In the old days, if returnees said the slightest thing wrong, they’d be purged or whisked off to a concentration camp. Now they were considered a positive asset, so the party started treating them better. A canny move, it turned out. There were ways of using hostages. The black

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

it came from party officials, who drilled the same messages into them day after day after day. “The dictator of South Korea started the Korean War! He was a pro-American imperialist! The leader of a puppet government! A poodle!” As a result, the militarization of the nation was entirely justified in their eyes. They were the only bulwark against im