朝鲜民众在金日成和金正日雕像前拍照。ED JONES/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES
North Korea may be the most secretive and totalitarian country in the world, as well as the wackiest. As a result, it inspires some of the best fiction and nonfiction, so the upside of the risk of nuclear war is an excuse to dip into literature that offers glimpses of this other world — and some insights into how to deal with it.
朝鲜可能是全世界最神秘、最极权也是最古怪的国家。因此催生了一批最优秀的虚构和非虚构作品。所以，核战争风险好的一面是给了我们一个借口，让我们可以去浏览关于这截然不同的世界的文学作品——并学到一些和它打交道的办法。
Thousands of North Koreans have fled their homeland since the famine of the late 1990s, and many are writing memoirs recounting their daily lives and extraordinary escapes. A leading example is IN ORDER TO LIVE: A North Korean Girl’s Journey to Freedom (Penguin, paper, $17) by Yeonmi Park, with Maryanne Vollers. Park is a young woman whose father was a cigarette smuggler and black market trader. As a girl, she believed in the regime (as did her mother), for life was steeped in propaganda and anti-Americanism. Even in her math class, “a typical problem would go like this: ‘If you kill one American bastard and your comrade kills two, how many dead American bastards do you have?’”
自90年代末的那场饥荒以来，成千上万朝鲜人逃离家园，其中很多人写回忆录讲述他们的日常生活和离奇的逃亡经历。一个最有名的例子是朴研美(Yeonmi Park)的《为了活下去——脱北女孩朴研美》(IN ORDER TO LIVE: A North Korean Girl’s Journey to Freedom)（企鹅出版社，平装，17美元）。朴研美的父亲是一名香烟走私贩和黑市商人。作为一个女孩，她（和她母亲一样）相信朝鲜政权，因为生活中充斥着宣传和反美言论。就连在她的数学课上，“常见的数学题大概是这样：如果你杀了一个美国坏蛋，你的同志杀了两个，你们总共杀死了几个美国坏蛋？”
What opened Park’s eyes was in part a pirated copy of the film “Titanic.” The government tries hard to ban any foreign television, internet or even music, and North Korean radios, which don’t have dials, can receive only local stations. But the black market fills the gap, with handymen who will tweak your radio to get Chinese stations, and with illegal thumb drives full of South Korean soap operas.
让朴延美睁开双眼的，在一定程度上是盗版电影《泰坦尼克号》(Titanic)。政府大力禁止任何外国电视、互联网甚至音乐，而朝鲜的收音机没有调台装置，只能接收当地的电台。但黑市填补了这个空白，心灵手巧的人会对你的收音机进行细微的改动，以便接收中国的电台，非法的U盘里装满了韩国肥皂剧。
I’m among those who argue that we in the West should do more to support this kind of smuggling, because it’s a way to sow dissatisfaction. Indeed, what moved Park was the love story in “Titanic”: “I was amazed that Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet were willing to die for love, not just for the regime, as we were. The idea that people could choose their own destinies fascinated me. This pirated Hollywood movie gave me my first small taste of freedom.”
我属于认为我们西方人应该采取更多措施来支持这种走私行为的人，因为这是让民众产生不满的一种方式。事实上改变朴研美的正是《泰坦尼克号》里的爱情故事：“莱奥纳多·迪卡普里奥(Leonardo DiCaprio)和凯特·温斯莱特(Kate Winslet)愿意为了爱情，而不是像我们一样为了国家而死，令我震惊。人们可以选择自己的命运这一点让我着迷。这部盗版好莱坞电影让我第一次品尝到了自由的滋味。”
In the end, Park’s father was arrested for smuggling, and the family’s life collapsed. Park and her sister went hungry and had to drop out of school, and she survived eating insects and wild plants.
后来，朴研美的父亲因走私被捕，一家人的生活崩塌了。朴研美和姐姐日日挨饿，只能辍学，靠吃昆虫和野菜维生。
So at age 13, Park and her mother crossed illegally into China — and immediately into the hands of human traffickers who were as scary as the North Korean secret police. They raped her mother and eventually Park as well, and both struggled in the netherworld in which North Koreans are stuck in China — because the Chinese authorities regularly detain them and send them home to face prison camp. Park and her mother were lucky, finally managing to sneak into Mongolia and then on to South Korea.
于是，朴研美在13岁时和母亲非法进入中国——随即她们又落入了和朝鲜秘密警察一样可怕的人贩子手中。他们强奸了她的母亲，最终也强奸了朴研美，她们在中国境内这个朝鲜人无法脱身的阴曹地府中苦苦挣扎——因为中国政府会定期将他们拘捕并送回祖国，那里有劳改营正等着他们。朴研美和母亲已是幸运，最终设法偷渡到了蒙古，随后去了韩国。
Another powerful memoir is THE GIRL WITH SEVEN NAMES: A North Korean Defector’s Story (William Collins, paper, $15.99) by Hyeonseo Lee, with David John. She is from Hyesan, the same town as Park. It’s an area on the Chinese border where smuggling is rampant, where people know a bit about the outside world and where disaffection, consequently, is greater than average.
另一本有影响力的回忆录是李晛瑞(Hyeonseo Lee)与戴维·约翰(David John)合著的《有七个名字的女孩——脱北者的真实故事》(THE GIRL WITH SEVEN NAMES: A North Korean Defector’s Story)（企鹅出版社，平装，15.99美元）。李晛瑞来自惠山，同时也是朴研美的故乡。这个位于中国边境的地区走私猖獗，人们对外面的世界有些许了解，因此不满情绪也比一般人多。
Still, Lee’s home, like every home, had portraits of the country’s first two leaders, Kim Il-sung and his son, Kim Jong-il, on the wall. (The grandson now in power, Kim Jong-un, hasn’t yet made his portrait ubiquitous.) Lee begins her story recounting how her father dashed into the family home as it was burning to rescue not family valuables but rather the portraits of the first leaders. There’s an entire genre of heroic propaganda stories in North Korea of people risking their lives to save such portraits.
尽管如此，李晛瑞的家也和所有朝鲜人家一样，墙上挂着国家前两任领导人金日成(Kim Il-sung)和他的儿子金正日(Kim Jong-il)的肖像画。（他的孙子——现在掌权的金正恩，还没有达到无处不在的地步。）李晛瑞在故事的开头详细叙述了她的父亲如何在家中失火时冲回房中，没有拿走家中的贵重物品，而是救出了领导人的几幅肖像。在朝鲜，讲述人们不顾性命挽救领导人肖像这一类型的英勇宣传故事数不胜数。
Like other kids, Lee grew up in an environment of formal reverence for the Kim dynasty. At supper she would say a kind of grace — to “Respected Father Leader Kim Il-sung” — before picking up her chopsticks.
和其他孩子一样，李晛瑞在一个对金氏王朝怀有崇高敬意的环境中长大。晚餐时，她会先念一句类似祷告的话语——“尊敬的父亲领袖金日成”——然后才拿起手中的筷子。
“Everything we learned about Americans was negative,” she writes. “In cartoons, they were snarling jackals. In the propaganda posters they were as thin as sticks with hook noses and blond hair. We were told they smelled bad. They had turned South Korea into a ‘hell on earth’ and were maintaining a puppet government there. The teachers never missed an opportunity to remind us of their villainy.
“我们了解到的有关美国的一切都是负面的，”她写道。“在动画片里，他们是嚎叫的豺狼。在宣传海报里，他们瘦得像根棍子，有着鹰钩鼻和金头发。我们还得知，美国人身上很臭。他们把韩国变成了‘人间地狱’，并且在那里控制着一个傀儡政府。老师从来不会放过任何一个机会来提醒我们他们有多么邪恶。”
“‘If you meet a Yankee bastard on the street and he offers you candy, do not take it!’ one teacher warned us, wagging a finger in the air. ‘If you do, he’ll claim North Korean children are beggars. Be on your guard if he asks you anything, even the most innocent questions.’”
“‘如果你在街上遇到一个混蛋美国佬给你糖吃，千万别拿！’一个老师一边警告我们一边摇晃着手指。‘如果你拿了，他就会说朝鲜小孩都是乞丐。他问任何问题，即使是最单纯的问题，你都要小心。’”
Hmm. No wonder my attempts at interviewing North Korean kids have never been very fruitful.
唔……难怪我每次采访朝鲜儿童都无功而返。
Lee escaped to China at age 17 and started a new life in Shanghai but remained in touch with her family. One day her mom called from North Korea. “I’ve got a few kilos of ice,” or crystal meth, she said, and she asked for Lee’s help in selling it in China. “In her world, the law was upside down,” Lee says, explaining how corruption and cynicism had shredded the social fabric of North Korea. “People had to break the law to live.”
李晛瑞17岁时逃到中国，在上海开始了新生活，但仍和家人保持联系。有一天，她妈妈从朝鲜打来电话。“我这里有几公斤冰，”她妈妈说，冰指的是冰毒，她要求李晛瑞帮忙在中国销售。“在她的世界里，法律是颠倒的，”李晛瑞说。她讲述了腐败和悲观冷漠如何撕裂了朝鲜的社会结构。“人们只有违反法律才能活下去。”
It’s fair to wonder how accurate these books are, for there’s some incentive when selling a memoir to embellish adventures. I don’t know, and in the case of “In Order to Live,” skeptics have noted inconsistencies in the stories and raised legitimate questions.
质疑这些书的准确性无可厚非，因为作者有可能为了增加销量而渲染自己的经历。我不知道，不过，质疑者指出了《为了活下去》中的故事前后不一致的情况，提出了合理的问题。
So how did North Korea come to be the most bizarre country in the world? For the history, one can’t do better than Bradley K. Martin’s magisterial UNDER THE LOVING CARE OF THE FATHERLY LEADER: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty (St. Martin’s Griffin, paper, $29.99). Martin recounts how a minor anti-Japanese guerrilla leader named Kim Il-sung came to be installed by the Russians as leader of the half of the Korean peninsula they controlled after World War II. Martin discovers that Kim’s father was a Christian and a church organist, and Kim himself attended church for a time. That didn’t last, and Kim later banned pretty much all religion — though he became something of a god himself, quite a trick for an atheist. But do North Koreans really believe in this “religion”?
那么，朝鲜是如何成为世界上最怪异的国家的呢？要想了解它的历史，最合适的书莫过于布拉德利·K·马丁(Bradley K. Martin)的权威著作：《在父亲般的领袖的关爱下——朝鲜和金氏王朝》（UNDER THE LOVING CARE OF THE FATHERLY LEADER: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty，St. Martin’s Griffin出版社，平装，29.99美元）。马丁讲述了一个名叫金日成的抗日游击队小头目，如何在二战后被俄罗斯人任命为朝鲜半岛俄方控制区域的领导人。马丁发现，金日成的父亲是一名基督徒，曾担任教堂的管风琴手，金日成本人有一段时间也去教堂做礼拜。但那并没有持续多久，后来，金日成基本上摒弃了所有的宗教信仰——不过，他自己变成了某种意义上的神，对无神论者来说，这可真够有手段的。不过，朝鲜人真的信仰这种“宗教”吗？
Judging from defectors I’ve interviewed and much of the literature on North Korea, many do — especially older people, farmers and those farther from the North Korean border. That’s partly a tribute to the country’s shameless propaganda, which B.R. Myers explores in his interesting book, THE CLEANEST RACE: How North Koreans See Themselves — And Why It Matters (Melville House, paper, $16). He notes that North Korea produced a poster showing a Christian missionary murdering a Korean child and calling for “revenge against the Yankee vampires” — at the same time that the United States was the country’s single largest donor of humanitarian aid. Myers argues that North Koreans have focused on what he calls “race-based paranoid nationalism,” including bizarre ideas about how Koreans are “the cleanest race” — hence the title — bullied and persecuted by outsiders.
从我采访过的脱北者和朝鲜的很多文献来看，很多人是相信的，尤其是老年人、农民，以及远离朝鲜边境的人。这在一定程度上要归功于这个国家无耻的宣传。B·R·迈尔斯(B.R. Myers)在饶有趣味的《最纯粹的种族——朝鲜人如何看待自己——以及为什么这很重要》（THE CLEANEST RACE: How North Koreans See Themselves—and Why It Matters，Melville House出版社，平装，16美元）中探讨了这个问题。他提到，朝鲜制作了一张海报，展示一名基督教传教士杀害了一名朝鲜儿童，呼吁“找洋鬼子报仇雪恨”——而当时，美国是朝鲜最大的人道主义援助国。迈尔斯认为，朝鲜人关注的是他所称的“以种族为基础的偏执民族主义”，包括认为朝鲜人是遭受外来者欺凌和迫害的“最纯粹的种族”的怪异想法——因此就有了书名中的说法。
For a more sympathetic view of North Korea’s emergence, check out various books by Bruce Cumings, a University of Chicago historian, like KOREA’S PLACE IN THE SUN: A Modern History (W.W. Norton, paper, $19.95). Cumings argues that North Korea is to some degree a genuine expression of Korean nationalism. I think Cumings is nuts when he says, “it is Americans who bear the lion’s share of the responsibility” for the division of the Korean peninsula. But his work is worth reading — unless you have high blood pressure, in which case consult a physician first.
如果你想了解一些对朝鲜的崛起持较正面态度的人，可以看看芝加哥大学(University of Chicago)史学家布鲁斯·卡明斯(Bruce Cumings)的多部著作，比如《朝鲜的远大未来——朝鲜现代史》（KOREA’S PLACE IN THE SUN: A Modern History: A Modern History，W.W. Norton出版社，平装，19.95美元）。卡明斯认为，朝鲜在某种程度上是朝鲜民族主义的真实体现。他认为在朝鲜半岛分裂问题上“美国人应该承担最大的责任”，我认为这是个疯狂的想法。不过，他的著作值得一读——不过你要是有高血压，还是先咨询一下医生为好。
Whatever the uncertainties about the accuracy of recent North Korean memoirs, it’s absolutely clear that some stories about North Korea are fabricated — because they’re fiction. Today’s political crisis with Pyongyang is a great excuse to read Adam Johnson’s THE ORPHAN MASTER’S SON (Random House, paper, $17), which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2013. Johnson tells the story of a military man turned prisoner turned celebrity turned villain, dealing for a while with utterly confused American visitors — an account so implausible and bizarre that it’s a perfect narrative for North Korea.
不管最近出版的朝鲜回忆录的准确性如何，很明显，关于朝鲜的有些故事是编出来的——因为它们是小说。如今美国与平壤的政治危机是读亚当·约翰逊(Adam Johnson)的《孤儿大师之子》（THE ORPHAN MASTER’S SON，Random House出版社，平装，17美元）的绝佳借口，该书2013年获得了普利策(Pulitzer Prize)小说奖。约翰逊讲述了一个人从军人沦为囚犯、而后变成名人、最后变成恶人的故事，有一阵子还和晕头转向的美国游客打交道——这个故事荒诞怪异，是对朝鲜的完美叙述。
The other fiction that I’d recommend is the Inspector O seriesby James Church, the pseudonym of a well-respected Western intelligence expert on North Korea. Inspector O is a North Korean police officer who investigates murders, a bank robbery and various other offenses, periodically dealing with foreigners and turning down chances to defect.
我想推荐的另一部小说是詹姆斯·彻奇(James Church)的《督察员O》(Inspector O)系列。詹姆斯·彻奇是一位颇受尊敬的西方朝鲜情报专家的笔名。督察员O是朝鲜的一名警察，负责调查谋杀和银行抢劫等罪行，经常与外国人打交道，多次拒绝了叛变的机会。
Inspector O is a complex, nuanced figure who understands that the regime he serves is corrupt, brutal and mendacious, but he remains loyal. That’s because he is a deeply patriotic and nationalistic Korean, and he resents the patronizing scorn of bullying Westerners. I think many North Korean officials today are an echo of the conflicted nationalist Inspector O.
督察员O是一个性格复杂、情感丰富的人物，他明白他服务的政权腐败、残酷和虚伪，但他依然对它保持忠诚。因为他很爱国，具有强烈的民族主义情结，他厌恶恃强凌弱的西方人的傲慢和轻蔑。我认为，在如今的很多朝鲜官员身上都能看到矛盾的民族主义者督察员O的影子。
本文最初发表于2018年1月1日。
本文作者纪思道(Nicholas Kristof)是时报观点与评论版面的专栏作者。
翻译：纽约时报中文网
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