我的朝鮮之旅 固定的行程純粹的路人

One of the best books written about North Korea is Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick. In it, she brilliantly reconstructs the lives of ordinary people living in Chongjin in the remote northeast of the country. I say “reconstruct” because her narrative is pieced together almost entirely from talking to exiles who managed to flee the country. Demick visited North Korea several times, but learnt little of value. “Visitors hewed to a carefully selected itinerary of monuments,” she wrote. They were assigned “minders” who ensured “there was no contact permitted with ordinary citizens”.

關於朝鮮最好的著作是芭芭拉•戴米克(Barbara Demick)的《沒什麼可嫉妒的》(Nothing to Envy)。書中，她精彩地重構了朝鮮偏遠的東北城市清津(Chongjin)普通人的生活。我用“重構”這個詞，因爲她的敘述幾乎完全由成功逃出朝鮮的流亡者的訪談拼接而成。戴米克去過朝鮮幾次，但沒有看到多少有價值的事情。“來訪者被圈在精心挑選的紀念碑行程上，”她在書中寫道。當局給他們安排了“看守”，保證他們遵守“不允許與普通市民接觸”的規則。

Until last week, I had never been to North Korea. I always felt faintly queasy opining about a country I had never set foot in. This month, finally, I managed to get there as part of a small delegation with the EU-Asia Centre, a think-tank dedicated to promoting better ties between Europe and Asia. Our five-day trip took us to Pyongyang, to the demilitarised zone on the tense border with South Korea and to Mangyongdae, a mountainous region that is the birthplace of Kim Il Sung, the nation’s founder. So what, if anything, did I learn?

我過去從未去過朝鮮。要就一個我從未踏足過的國家發表看法，我總感覺有一絲不安。本月，作爲致力於促進歐亞關係的智庫“歐盟-亞洲中心”(EU-Asia Centre)的小型代表團的一員，我終於設法來到了朝鮮。我們5天的行程包括平壤、朝韓緊張的邊境上的非軍事區(DMZ)以及位於山區的朝鮮開國領導人金日成(Kim Il-sung)的出生地萬景臺(Mangyongdae)。那麼，我看到了什麼呢？

The first is that Pyongyang – or at least what I was able to see of it – looks slightly less grim than I had imagined. True, many of the austere buildings have all the charm of a Soviet housing estate. True, too, there are few shops to be seen. The city, designed to project power and prestige, is built on a decidedly inhuman scale. Yet there is more bustle than you might expect. There are more cars than just a few years ago, many of them new. It is a development that has necessitated the installation of traffic lights. Many women wear high heels in a variety of fashions, imported from China and evidently not manufactured in Pyongyang Shoe Factory Number 1. There’s an ice rink and a bowling alley and some pleasantly manicured parks.

首先，平壤，或者至少我看到的那部分平壤，看起來比我此前想象的可怕景象稍好一些。沒錯，許多樸素的建築帶有蘇聯式工人新村的全部“魅力”。同樣沒錯的是，很少看到商店。這個城市的設計宗旨是展示權力和威望，規模大得不那麼“宜居”。但這個城市也許比你想象的更繁忙。比起幾年前，路上的汽車更多，很多還是新的。這種發展使安裝交通燈變得必要。許多女人穿着各式各樣的高跟鞋，這些鞋子從中國進口，明顯不是由平壤第一製鞋廠生產的。有一個溜冰場、一個保齡球場和一些精心養護的公園。

Our group was barred, or otherwise dissuaded, from entering ordinary supermarkets. The few shops we did glimpse stocked a reasonable range of goods, including Japanese snacks, Dutch beer (Heineken) and Chinese instant noodles. Foreign currency is accepted. Shop assistants are able to rattle off prices in euros, renminbi and dollars – just for starters. (No mention yet of the Scottish pound.) No one hides the fact they have foreign currency, even though this can only have been obtained outside the state system. Much, apparently, makes its way down what is known as “the road of life” from Dandong on the other side of the Chinese border.

我們一行被禁止（或者被勸阻）進入普通的超市。我們有幸光顧的幾家商店裏擺放的商品種類還比較多，包括日本小吃、荷蘭啤酒（喜力）和中國方便麪。店裏接受外匯。售貨員能夠快速報出用歐元、人民幣和美元等貨幣計算的價格（未提到蘇格蘭磅）（編者注：此文寫於蘇格蘭獨立公投之前）。沒人隱瞞他們擁有外匯的事實，儘管這些外匯只能從國家體系之外獲得。很明顯，其中很多是從朝中邊境對面的丹東流入朝鮮的，這條途徑被稱爲“生命線”。

One needs to be wary of impressions gleaned from Pyongyang. This is a showcase city, the home of the connected and presumably loyal elite. You have to remind yourself constantly that you are being shown the “good parts”. The rest of North Korea is, to quote resident diplomats, “another country”.

人們需要警惕平壤給人的印象。這是一個櫥窗城市，是有關係的、想必忠誠的精英階層的家園。你必須不斷提醒自己，你被帶去參觀的地方只是“好的部分”。用一位駐朝外交官的話來說，朝鮮的其他地方是“另一個國家”。

The second thing to note is the pervasive sense of victimhood. Paul French’s book, North Korea: State of Paranoiais aptly named. Any conversation on a serious topic starts and ends with Pyongyang’s struggle for survival in the face of unrelenting pressure from “the imperialist US” and its “puppet” South Korean servant. The US wants to control all of northeast Asia. China wants to use North Korea as a buffer. Everyone wants to topple the Kim regime. (Just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.) Singled out for opprobrium are the regular US-South Korean military manoeuvres, which are deemed ample justification for Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons programme. Even economic policy is framed in terms of external threat. That is why North Korea must be self-reliant – something it has patently failed to achieve given its dependence on outside aid. Paranoia assumes an almost surreal quality. Asked about the rate of economic growth, the head of one institute replies: “It is the policy of our party not to reveal statistics about our economy.”

第二件值得一提的事情是受害者心態的瀰漫。保羅•弗倫奇(Paul French)所著的《朝鮮：偏執之國》(North Korea:State of Paranoia)書名頗爲貼切。任何涉及嚴肅話題的交談的開頭和結尾，都是平壤如何在“美帝”和“南朝鮮傀儡政權”持續不斷的壓力下掙扎求生。美國想控制整個東北亞。中國想把朝鮮當成緩衝區。每個人都想顛覆金氏政權（僅僅因爲你有偏執症，並不意味着人家會放過你）。美韓經常舉行的軍事演練尤其是厲聲譴責的對象，被視爲足以證明朝鮮應當推進核武計劃。就連經濟政策也被置於外部威脅的框架內。這正是朝鮮必須自給自足的原因——而依靠外部援助的朝鮮顯然未能做到自給自足。這種偏執還帶上了一種幾乎稱得上荒誕的性質。在被問及經濟增長率時，一個機構的負責人回答：“我黨的政策是不披露我國經濟統計數據。”

A third observation, hardly surprising, is the sheer intensity of the cult of Kim. The interests of state and dynasty have merged. One senior researcher quoted a poem suggesting the Kims would rule forever. No mention of the nation’s founder is complete without the epithet “Great Leader” and no reference to his 31-year-old grandson and current ruler without a nod to “the wise leadership of the Great Marshall Kim Jong Un”. Kim badges, worn over the heart, are obligatory. So is bowing at the foot of the dynasty’s ubiquitous monuments.

我觀察到的第三個現象是對金氏統治者的極度膜拜，這一點不會讓人意外。國家利益和金氏王朝的利益融爲一體。一位高級研究人員引用了一首表達金氏家族王朝永固的詩。但凡提到國家的開國者，就必須加上“偉大領導人”的稱號，但凡說到現在的統治者、開國者現年31歲的孫子，就必須稱讚“偉大元帥金正恩(Kim Jong-un)的英明領導”。將金氏統治者的像章佩戴在心口，是強制性的。人們也必須在金氏王朝隨處可見的紀念碑腳下鞠躬。

Yet in the end, Demick is right. A visit to North Korea reveals little. Our trip resembled The Truman Show, in which the protagonist is trapped in a televised soap opera. In the North Korea I visited, the food was ample, the waitresses were pretty and the soldiers at the DMZ taller than average. It was like some warped version of Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon, “where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking and all the children are above average”. Except that, thanks to food shortages and a broken economic system, that is almost exactly the opposite of the truth.

然而最終而言，《沒什麼可嫉妒的》作者戴米克是對的，朝鮮之旅沒什麼收穫。我們的行程就像《楚門的世界》(The Truman Show)，電影的主人公被困入了在電視上播放的肥皂劇。在我訪問朝鮮期間的所到之處，食品是充足的、女侍者是漂亮的、非軍事區士兵的身高高於平均水平。這就像是扭曲了的蓋瑞森•凱勒(Garrison Keillor)的沃比根湖(Lake Wobegon)，“那裏所有的女人都很強壯，所有的男人都很英俊，所有的孩子都優於平均水平”。只是，由於食物短缺和經濟體制失靈，這一切表象幾乎正是真相的反面。