Masaji Ishikawa

“People came to our house from far and wide. Party and military bigwigs, some guy known as the “combat commander,” the village…

— Masaji Ishikawa

“This was laughable, of course, but that’s always the way with totalitarian regimes. Language gets turned on its head. Serfdom is freedom.…

— Masaji Ishikawa

“I was amazed we’d got through the checkpoint so easily. I couldn’t help asking about it. “Well, these soldiers, you see .…

— Masaji Ishikawa

“My family was poor, but my childhood days in Mizonokuchi were the happiest of my life. Even now, when I think about…

— Masaji Ishikawa

“People ridiculed me. “What on earth are you doing?” they asked. “Why are you working so hard?” They didn’t understand that driving…

— Masaji Ishikawa

“I mean, this was the second half of the twentieth century, for pity’s sake, and they still saw communism as the road…

— Masaji Ishikawa

“But the reality hit home late that night. I had a wife. And now two children. And however hard I worked, I…

— Masaji Ishikawa

“So we became masters at faking it. Everyone did. To do anything else could have gotten us killed.”

— Masaji Ishikawa

“I still hope to rescue my remaining children. It is a terrible curse to not even know if they are still alive.…

— Masaji Ishikawa

“But that’s the trouble with propaganda. It constantly contradicts itself.”

— Masaji Ishikawa

“The consul was at a loss for words the first time he set eyes on me. “My God! How could they treat…

— Masaji Ishikawa

“We were nothing but a bunch of ravenous ghosts. The barely living dead.”

— Masaji Ishikawa

“Did the International Committee of the Red Cross know anything about this? Did the United States? The UN? Yes, yes, and yes.…

— Masaji Ishikawa

“When we got back to our house, the villagers who’d had helped carry her coffin as far as the mountainside were there,…

— Masaji Ishikawa

“Much later, I checked out the Ten Commandments of the Abrahamic religions. You know how many of them contain a reference to…

— Masaji Ishikawa

“But the trouble is that some people really do end up brainwashed. They come to believe all the bullshit. But, thankfully, there…

— Masaji Ishikawa

“Oddly enough, I never heard him complain about or blame the political system of North Korea. I finally realized that he’d never…

— Masaji Ishikawa

“A dog. What was it doing, leaping about like that, racing around this strange guy’s feet? Wagging its tail. Barking. The man…

— Masaji Ishikawa

“Under the food-distribution system, regular workers were officially entitled to one and a half pounds of grain per day. For some perverse…

— Masaji Ishikawa

“I even heard a rumor of one man killing his wife and eating her.”

— Masaji Ishikawa

“We were taught that the United States brutally slaughters our brothers and sisters in the south. That we must free the people…

— Masaji Ishikawa

“Working on the farm was physically tough, but I was a teenager at the time, so I could cope with it. The…

— Masaji Ishikawa

“You don't choose to be born. You just are. And your birth is your destiny, some say. I say the hell with…

— Masaji Ishikawa

“And what did they do about it? Nothing.”

— Masaji Ishikawa

“If our troubles were purely the result of US imperialism, why weren’t South Koreans starving too?”

— Masaji Ishikawa