《刺杀金正恩》为何激怒朝鲜
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.
朝鲜人相信，西方一直热衷于暗杀金氏家族领导人，或者以犯下战争罪为由起诉他们。朝鲜现任领导人金正恩(Kim Jong Un)的祖父金日成(Kim Il-sung)在1945年结束苏联流亡回到平壤后不久，就被人扔了一颗手榴弹，但被一位俄罗斯人所救。即便是在今天，朝鲜官方媒体仍在盛赞这位俄罗斯人。1950年，美国人获悉金日成在朝鲜极北地区行踪的情报之后，曾试图用绰号“泰山”(Tarzan)的巨型炸弹杀死这位朝鲜的首位独裁者。大约十年前，金日成的儿子、金正恩的父亲金正日(Kim Jong-il)在坐火车前往朝鲜西北部的旅途中逃过一场大爆炸；他在地下一连躲了好几个星期——而在2003年，美国就在试图用地堡炸弹将伊拉克领导人“斩首”。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，他不太可能被投票赶下台——对一个以超过99%的选票“当选”的人来说，这几乎是不可能的——但还是可能被子弹干掉。就在一年前，朝鲜官方媒体对金氏家族内部的一场未遂政变进行了近乎恶毒的批判。金正恩因迄今还未进行任何国事访问而感到不快，但他在自己的国家里也很少旅行，他更喜欢平壤的安全感，这里有朝鲜战争期间平壤遭受轰炸时深挖的地道。
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.
由于可能在国际社会遭受起诉，金氏家族及其政权捍卫者大概尤为敏感。联合国(UN)朝鲜人权状况调查委员会主席迈克尔•柯比(Michael Kirby)在写给金正恩的信中警告称，他可能会因为对一个集中营系统负有最终责任而受到海牙国际刑事法院审判。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.
尽管看起来联合国正寻求让金正恩为其前任过去几十年的暴政负责，但实际上它并非提倡暴力推翻朝鲜政权。然而金氏家族极力让朝鲜民众相信，联合国调查委员会报告的最终目的是武装干涉。朝鲜民众与拥护“白头山血统”的“社会体系”密不可分——白头山是宣传中金日成的神秘出生地，以及上世纪30年代政治征战的地方。这些基础神话如今成为金正恩主张权力的主要依据。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.
血统本身就是替换朝鲜领导人的障碍，除非朝鲜政权彻底崩溃：朝鲜领导人将必须由近亲、而非其他官员接替。中国著名的朝鲜事务评论员张连贵最近表示，朝鲜政权痴迷于家族传承让人想起了封建主义而非社会主义。他愤慨地问道：“你们觉得这还像马克思主义吗？”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，任何公开将矛头对准朝鲜领导人的举动，无论多么微不足道或是为了娱乐，都会引发朝鲜极为激烈的公众反应。毕竟，为了保护其领导人对执政合法性和国家政权的主张，朝鲜甚至祭出核威慑，即所谓的“宝剑”。无论它是否是索尼(Sony)网络袭击事件的幕后黑手，朝鲜已经赢得了暂时的胜利——维护了金正恩作为主权国家领导人的虚无缥缈的尊严。The writer is a lecturer in Chinese history at Leeds university and editor of
本文作者是利兹大学(Leeds University)中国史讲师，同时也是主编
