Winner of the 2010 BBC Samuel Johnson prize
What if the nightmare imagined by George Orwell in 1984 were real? 这本书真是太棒了，我读英文还不是很快，不过书中的真实故事越来越抓住人的心理，前几天晚上都看到很晚才睡。此书中有些许关联的不同人物穿插叙事的方式也没有觉得太乱，比较自然、有条理。与1984的绝望不同，这本书除了让人看到外人很难知道的一些真相，悲哀，但同时也给人一些希望，让人珍惜亲情。此处摘录一些印象深刻的段落(数字是 Kindle 的 location)。
103 没有污染
The night sky in North Korea is a sight to behold. It might be the most brilliant in Northeast Asia, the only place spared the coal dust, Gobi Desert and carbon monoxide choking the rest of the continent.
209
They learned that China’s diluted brand of c0mmun1sm was less successful than that brought by Kim Il-sung and that millions of Chinese were going hungry.
341 轻率、残酷的三八线
The United States was concerned that the Soviet Union might seize Korea as a staging ground on the way to the bigger prize of Japan… So the two army officers looked for a convenient way to divide the peninsula. They slapped a line across the map at the 38th parallel.
The line bore little relationship to anything in Korean history or geography… The bifurcation between north and south was an entirely foreign creation, cooked up in Washington and stamped on the Koreans without any input from them. One story has it that the secretary of state at the time, Edward Stettinius, had to ask a subordinate where Korean was.
373
Some of the rice farmers were sympathetic to the North because they’d heard a rumor that the C0mmun1sts would give them free land.
409 傻子往北跑，能人往南跑
Fearing persecution by the C0mmun1sts, tens of thousands of Koreans from north of the 38th parallel had fled south – among them landlords, businessmen, Christian clergymen, and Japanese collaborators. A small number of C0mmun1st sympathizers fled north. (这部分人的命运很悲惨，因为是从“敌方”过来的)
414 卸磨杀驴
After the war, Kim Il-sung made it his first order of business to weed out foe from friend. He started at the top with potential rivals for the leadership. He disposed of many of his comrades in arms who had led the struggle from Manchuria to unseat the Japanese occupiers. He ordered the arrest of the founding members of the C0mmun1st Par4y in South Korea. They had been invaluable during the war; now that they’d served their purpose they could be discarded. Throughout the 1950s, many more were purged in what was increasingly coming to resemble an ancient Chinese empire with Kim Il-sung the unchallenged master of the realm.
424 精细的人口分类学。他们为了防止人们篡改自己的档案，在北部一个山区省存有备份。上大学是需要政审的
The classifications became more refined in subsequent phases, such as the “Understanding People Project,” between 1972 and 1974.
439
North Koreans of the lower ranks were banned from living in the showcase capital of Pyongyang or the nicer patches of countryside toward the south where the soil was more fertile and the weather warmer.
471 创造历史，无可争议
It was especially taboo to talk about the Korean War and who started it. In the official histories (and there was nothing but official history in North Korea), it was the South Korean Army that invaded, acting on orders from the Americans, not the North Korean Army storming across the 38th parallel.
510
Their textbooks at school were full of stories of people burned, crushed, stabbed, shot, and poisoned by the enemy.
556 某些移居日本的人把后代送回朝鲜帮助建设“祖国”，然而他们被视为敌人（除了他们的财富），命运凄惨
No matter that they were avowed C0mmun1sts who gave up comfortable lives in Japan, they were lumped in with the hostile class. The regime couldn’t trust anyone with money who wasn’t a member of the Worker’s Par4y… the strength of the regime came from its ability to isolate its own citizens completely.
587 孔夫子教遍地开花
Koreans have measured their success in life by their proximity to power – part of a long Asian tradition of striving to get off the farm and close to the imperial palace.
643 喉舌
“Those who write in accordance with the par4y’s intention are heroes,” Kim Jong-il proclaimed.
646 无耻流氓穷光蛋也要面子，掩耳盗铃
Because Pyongyang is the only North Korean city frequented by foreigners, the regime goes to great lengths to ensure that its inhabitants make a good impression with their appearance and are ideologically sound… The streets and squares in the city center were designed in the ostentatiously oversized style favored in Moscow and other C0mmun1st cities that conveys the power of the regime over the individual.
691
North Korea was perpetually short of men – an estimated 20 percent of working-age men were in the armed services, the largest per capita military in the world.
704 改造人类
Kim Il-sung’s goal wasn’t merely to build a new country; he wanted to build better people, to reshape human nature. To that end, he created his own philosophical system, juche, which is commonly translated as “self-reliance.”
759 造神从娃娃抓起
A few days before each birthday, the Workers’ Par4y would distribute to every child more than two pounds of sweets… When the time came, the children lined up in front of the portraits to express their gratitude… “Thank you, dear father Kim Il-sung”
861 一切行动听指挥
The mobile police often dropped in after midnight to see if there were any overnight guests who might have come to visit without travel permits…Since the country was too poor and the power supply too unreliable for electronic surveillance, state security relied on human intelligence – snitches.
887 外国人民生活在水深火热中
Anything positive that happend in capitalist countries or especially South Korea, which in 1998 hosted the Summer Olympics, was downplayed. Strikes, disasters, riots, murders – elsewhere – got plenty of coverage.
916 社会主义需要坚强的意志
The Eastern Europeans and the Chinese weren’t as strong by nature or as disciplined.
985
New clothes were dispensed by your work unit or school, often on Kim Il-sung’s birthday, reinforcing his image as the source of all good things.
1009 泡菜是不能共产的
The North Korean regime understood you couldn’t keep Koreans happy without kimchi. Each family got 70 kilograms per adult and 50 kilos per child… Kimchi thieves were common in Chongjin. Even in a society as collectivist as North Korea, no one wanted to share their kimchi with a stranger.
1024
In fact, thousands of ethnic Koreans in China fled the famine caused by Mao Zedong’s disastrous “Great Leap Forward” to return to North Korea.
1032
Lies were built upon lies, all the way to the top, so it is in fact conceivable that Kim Il-sung himself didn’t know when the economy crashed…
1036
Kim Il-sung skillfully played the Soviet Union and China against each other, using their rivalry to extract as much aid as possible. Like an old-style emperor, he commanded tribute from neighboring realms: Stalin personally sent an armored limousine, Mao sent a complete train carriage… One day he would decree that the country should switch from rice to potatoes for its staple food; the next he would decide that raising ostriches was the cure for North Korea’s food shortage. The country lurched from one harebrained scheme to another.
1046 就像1984里
The north Korean propaganda machine kept hysteria at a high level, ginning up incessant reports of imminent invasion by the imperialist warmongers.
1103 拯救嗷嗷待哺的韩国同胞
People were told that their government was stockpiling food to feed the starving South Korean masses on the blessed day of reunification. They were told that the United states had instituted a blockade against North Korea that was keepking out food… United States – North Korea’s favorite scapegoat.
1114 忍受饥饿，升华精神
Enduring hunger became part of one’s patriotic duty. Billboards went up in Pyongyang touting the new slogan, “Let’s Eat Two Meals a Day.” North Korean television ran a documentary about a man whose stomach burst, it was claimed, from eating too much rice.
1301 只有皇上可以风流
Pornographers were executed. Notwithstanding his own excesses and those of Kim Jong-il, a playboy in his youth, par4y officials caught in adulterous affairs lost their jobs.
1744 神死了！
“If a great man ilke Kim Il-sung can die, why should a good-for-nothing ilke me go on living and consume food?” he cried.
2113
North Koreans learned to swallow their pride and hold their noses. They picked kernels of undigested corn out of the excrement of farm animals.
2304 不是被饿死的
By 1998, an estimated 600,000 to 2 million North Koreans had died as a result of the famine, as much as 10 percent of the population. In Chongjin, where food supplies were cut off earlier than the rest of North Korea, the toll might have been as high as 20 percent. Exact figures would be nearly impossible to tally since North Korean hospitals could not report starvation as a cause of death.
Between 1996 and 2005, North Korea would receive $2.4 billion worth of food aid, much of it from the United States. But as much as the North Korean regime was willing to accept foreign food, it rejected the foreigners who came along with it.
2659 关于吃人
It does not seem, though, that the practice was widespread or even occurred to the degree that was chronicled in China during the 1958-62 famine, which killed as many as 30 million people.
2877 失败的政变
In the end, the entire 6th Army was dissolved, replaced eventually by units from the 9th Army from Wonsan. the process dragged on for many months. To this day, the exact reasons remain a mystery… Supposedly, corruption was rampant within the 6th Army and its officers were skimming off the profits for themselves and, like capos in the Mafia, were punished by the big boss.
2958 共产也要防盗
Most of the families in his neighborhood had raised the walls around their houses, ignoring a regulation that restricted the height to 1.5 meters so that police could look in.
3019
Since North Korea couldn’t manufacture its own appliances anymore, imported sets had to be fixed to the government stations and then their tuners disabled – a North Korean version of crippleware that would prevent them from receiving any information from the outside world.
3100 株连
Any antiregime activity would have terrible consequences for the protester, his immediate family, and all other known relatives. Under a system that sought to stamp out tainted blood for three generations, the punishment would extend to parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, cousins.
3344 前50年只有不到1000人逃出！关键就是他们认为自己还是世界上最幸福的。
In the nearly half a century that elapsed between the end of the Korean War and Mi-ran’s defection in October 1998, only 923 North Koreans had fled to South Korea. It was a minuscule number if you consider that while the Berlin Wall stood an average of 21,000 East Germans fled west every year.
3352 叛逃的代价… 不过许多人还是渴望自由。
Defectors had to be able to live with the knowledge that their freedom came at the expense of loved ones who would likely spend the rest of their lives in a labor camp… By 2001, it was estimated that 100,000 North Koreans had sneaked into China, a small percentage of whom eventually defected to South Korea.
3375 传说中，边界那边的中国农民都很富有，一天吃三顿米饭
(It was said) that ordinary Chinese peasants living across the border were so rich that they ate white rice three times a day.
3388 我以前也是这么想的……
In her wildest dreams Dr. Kim never imagined leaving North Korea. It was not that she was ignorant or lacking in curiosity about the world – she was an avid reader and loved tales of exotic faraway lands – but as far as she was concerned, North Korea was the very best country of all. Why go anywhere else?
3578 中国会遣返叛逃者
At least eight thousand women were arrested in one such roundup in March 2000. (As of 2008, the crackdown on North Korean defectors continued.)
3863 韩国接受朝鲜人“叛逃”，但是
The NIS was also screening for Korean-speaking Chinese posing as North Koreans to obtain South Korean citizenship and resettlement benefits that were worth more than $20,000.
3963 叛逃头等舱
Defections were arranged like package tours and Mrs. Song went first class. Her package included the private car that drove her from Chongjin to the border, the bribes to the North Korean border guards who carried her on their backs across the river, and the stolen South Korean passport. “I could have done it cheaper,” Oak-hee explained, “but I wanted her to tranvel like a VIP.”
4533 精神食粮
When North Korea runs short of food, the regime feeds its population with more propaganda.
