《刺殺金正恩》爲何激怒朝鮮
Hot-headed North Korean protests over disrespectful portrayals of their leaders are hardly a new phenomenon. In a world where even an online meme could be taken as a slight against its “supreme dignity”, even Pyongyang’s only formal ally, China, has been subject to censorship demands. So, to understand why The Interview has triggered such a strong and sustained rhetorical response from the North Koreans — who called it an “act of war” — it pays to look back at a history strewn with assassination attempts.
North Koreans believe the west has long been seized with the desire to assassinate the Kims or put them in the dock for war crimes. Someone rolled a grenade at Kim Il Sung, grandfather of present leader Kim Jong Un, soon after he arrived in Pyongyang from exile in the Soviet Union in 1945; even today, state media extols a Russian who saved the young leader’s life. The Americans tried to kill the original North Korean dictator with huge bombs nicknamed “Tarzan” in 1950, having received intelligence about his whereabouts in the country’s extreme north. About a decade ago, Kim Jong Il, Kim Il Sung and father of the current leader, escaped a huge explosion on a train journey to the northwest of his country; and he went underground for weeks on end while the US was trying to “decapitate” the Iraqi leadership with bunker-busting munitions in 2003.
朝鮮人相信，西方一直熱衷於暗殺金氏家族領導人，或者以犯下戰爭罪爲由起訴他們。朝鮮現任領導人金正恩(Kim Jong Un)的祖父金日成(Kim Il-sung)在1945年結束蘇聯流亡回到平壤後不久，就被人扔了一顆手榴彈，但被一位俄羅斯人所救。即便是在今天，朝鮮官方媒體仍在盛讚這位俄羅斯人。1950年，美國人獲悉金日成在朝鮮極北地區行蹤的情報之後，曾試圖用綽號“泰山”(Tarzan)的巨型炸彈殺死這位朝鮮的首位獨裁者。大約十年前，金日成的兒子、金正恩的父親金正日(Kim Jong-il)在坐火車前往朝鮮西北部的旅途中逃過一場大爆炸；他在地下一連躲了好幾個星期——而在2003年，美國就在試圖用地堡炸彈將伊拉克領導人“斬首”。Kim Jong Un surely knows he is unlikely to be ousted by the ballot — virtually impossible for a man “elected” with more than 99 per cent of the vote — but may yet be removed by the bullet. Just a year ago, state media practically ruptured with venom at an attempted coup within the royal family. Kim Jong Un has been needled for not yet undertaking any state visits, but he barely even travels in his own country, preferring the security of Pyongyang with its deep tunnels dug during the pounding of the capital during the Korean war.
金正恩肯定知道，他不太可能被投票趕下臺——對一個以超過99%的選票“當選”的人來說，這幾乎是不可能的——但還是可能被子彈幹掉。就在一年前，朝鮮官方媒體對金氏家族內部的一場未遂政變進行了近乎惡毒的批判。金正恩因迄今還未進行任何國事訪問而感到不快，但他在自己的國家裏也很少旅行，他更喜歡平壤的安全感，這裏有朝鮮戰爭期間平壤遭受轟炸時深挖的地道。
The Kim family and its state defenders are probably feeling particularly sensitive because of the shadow of possible international indictments. Michael Kirby, chairman of the Commission of Inquiry of the UN into North Korean human rights, wrote to Kim Jong Un to inform him he could be called to The Hague for trial as the man ultimately responsible for a system of gulags.
由於可能在國際社會遭受起訴，金氏家族及其政權捍衛者大概尤爲敏感。聯合國(UN)朝鮮人權狀況調查委員會主席邁克爾•柯比(Michael Kirby)在寫給金正恩的信中警告稱，他可能會因爲對一個集中營系統負有最終責任而受到海牙國際刑事法院審判。While it may look as though the UN is seeking to hold Kim Jong Un responsible for decades of abuse overseen by his predecessors, it is not exactly advocating violent overthrow. Yet North Korean citizens are urged to believe that the ultimate end of the COI report is armed intervention. They are closely attached to a “social system” that serves to support the “Baekdu bloodline” — a reference to the mountain that is the mythical site of Kim Jong Il’s birth and its years in the political wilderness in the 1930s. These are the founding myths that now underpin Kim Jong Un’s main claim to power.
儘管看起來聯合國正尋求讓金正恩爲其前任過去幾十年的暴政負責，但實際上它並非提倡暴力推翻朝鮮政權。然而金氏家族極力讓朝鮮民衆相信，聯合國調查委員會報告的最終目的是武裝干涉。朝鮮民衆與擁護“白頭山血統”的“社會體系”密不可分——白頭山是宣傳中金日成的神祕出生地，以及上世紀30年代政治征戰的地方。這些基礎神話如今成爲金正恩主張權力的主要依據。The bloodline itself is the obstacle to replacing a North Korean leader in any scenario short of total collapse: he or she would need to be replaced with a close relative, not a bureaucratic colleague. Zhang Liangui, a leading Chinese commentator on Korean affairs, recently described the state’s obsession with family heritage as more redolent of feudalism than socialism. “Does this look at all Marxist to you?” he asked indignantly.
血統本身就是替換朝鮮領導人的障礙，除非朝鮮政權徹底崩潰：朝鮮領導人將必須由近親、而非其他官員接替。中國著名的朝鮮事務評論員張連貴最近表示，朝鮮政權癡迷於家族傳承讓人想起了封建主義而非社會主義。他憤慨地問道：“你們覺得這還像馬克思主義嗎？”Any attempt to go after the North Korean leadership in public, however trivial or light-hearted, will therefore merit the strongest possible public response. After all, this is a country that has formulated nothing less than a nuclear deterrent, or “a treasured sword”, as it is known, to protect its leaders’ claims to legitimacy and state power. Whether or not it was behind the cyberattack on Sony, the country has won a momentary victory for Kim Jong Un’s fictionalised dignity as the leader of a sovereign state.
因此，任何公開將矛頭對準朝鮮領導人的舉動，無論多麼微不足道或是爲了娛樂，都會引發朝鮮極爲激烈的公衆反應。畢竟，爲了保護其領導人對執政合法性和國家政權的主張，朝鮮甚至祭出核威懾，即所謂的“寶劍”。無論它是否是索尼(Sony)網絡襲擊事件的幕後黑手，朝鮮已經贏得了暫時的勝利——維護了金正恩作爲主權國家領導人的虛無縹緲的尊嚴。The writer is a lecturer in Chinese history at Leeds university and editor of
本文作者是利茲大學(Leeds University)中國史講師，同時也是主編
