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國立臺灣師範大學英語系 碩 士 論 文 Master’s Thesis Department of English National Taiwan Normal University 見證《逃出第十四號勞改營》中的隱形傷口： 脫北者的創傷記憶再現 To Witness the Invisible Wound in Escape from Camp 14: Representing the Traumatic Memories of North Korean Defectors 指導教授: 黃 涵 榆 Advisor: Dr. Han-Yu Huang 研究生: 廖 翊 鈞 中華民國 106 年 7 月 July 2017 摘要 本文以《逃出第十四號勞改營》為主要文本，旨在探討脫北者之創傷記憶再 現與讀者閱讀其證言的過程。脫北者所承受的國家暴力不僅摧殘身心，也摧毀了 紀錄暴力記憶的結構。語言做為一種結構性的表達，亦無法完整容納創傷，必定 有溢出於文字之外且不可言說的片斷經驗，因此《逃出第十四號勞改營》的作者 布雷恩．哈登（Blain Harden）整合了文字、照片與圖片，甚至是以脫北者申東 赫的身體傷疤作為呈現記憶的媒介，試圖以不可磨滅的感官記憶與身心遺跡拼湊 創傷記憶。脫北者的證言往往受創傷記憶的延遲影響，造成細節流失與扭曲，他 們飄忽反覆的生命故事，正好引出創傷與見證間的弔詭關係：證言因為創傷而不 完整，但卻也因此倍顯真實。 在資訊流通快速且形式多元的｢見證世代｣(the era of witness)，證言可以記錄、 更可以建構創傷。藉由探討構築脫北者證言的三大要素―見證者、媒介、讀者， 本文共可分為三章節。第一章作為本文背景知識探討與往後章節的基礎，主要涵 蓋北韓自韓戰後的簡史與其人民的集體記憶，並探究脫北者在國際間的複雜身分。 第二章分析《逃出第十四號勞改營》中再現申東赫創傷記憶的方法和媒介，以其 訪談內容和手繪圖像作為主要討論對象，並特別關注脫北者記憶之於全球化時代 所遇到的困境。第三章探討讀者之於閱讀脫北者創傷證言時所面對的特殊責任， 在承受二次見證與二次創傷之餘，讀者能否辨認並填補創傷證言間的空白和沉默， 開展出只有讀者才辦得到的證言補述，與見證者一同淡化傷疤。 關鍵字：脫北者、證言、見證、創傷記憶 Abstract Escape from Camp 14: One Man’s Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West (2012), authored by Blaine Harden, is a wide circulated North Korean gulag testimony featuring the life story of Shin Dong-Hyuk, a North Korean defector who miraculous escapes from Kaechon internment camp in 2005 and currently lives in South Korea. This book integrates Shin’s Korean-language diary and the content of multiple private interviews between Shin and Harden. It is not only a rare representation of North Korean gulag memories but also an honest record of a traumatic victim’s struggle for his reconnection to the world. Motivated by the uniqueness of Shin’s testimony and its controversial revision, this thesis aims to explore the questions embedded in the process of reconstructing North Korean defector’s traumatic memories. From the angles of the witness of a traumatic event, the medium conveying the memories, and the reader of a testimony, this thesis argues that similar to Elie Weisel’s concept of “trusted silence” in the Holocaust literature, there are also many silent moments and invisible wounds yet to be uncovered and interpreted in the North Korean defection testimony. These silent moments are the essential sites for the reader to witness the defectors’ trauma; only when these invisible wounds are revealed and witnessed can the healing process begins, and the cycle of memory transference completes. Moving across the stances of the witness (writer), the medium, and the reader of North Korean defection testimony, this thesis can be mainly divided into three chapters. To prepare the ensuing discussion of defection testimony, the first chapter introduces North Korea’s brief history after the Korean War and the common ideologies shared by North Koreans including the collective memories of the country’s heavy historical revisionism, Kim’s cult of personality, and the famine of the 1990s. In the second chapter, the narrative strategies of representing North Korean defectors’ gulag memories in Escape from Camp 14 will be the focus. Particularly, this chapter deals with inherent problems that occur during the representation of a local memory in a global context. The final chapter centers on the discussion of the reader/listener’s ethical responsibility in receiving North Korean gulag memories, highlighting the possible overlapping role between a listener and a therapist. Keywords: North Korean defectors, testimony, witness, traumatic memory Acknowledgement I would first like to express my sincere gratitude to my adviser, Professor Han-yu Huang, for his professional guidance and heartfelt encouragement throughout my journey of writing this thesis. Prof. Huang teaches me so much more than how to conduct a literature research. I would always remember Prof. Huang’s wonderful lectures which help me define and refine the person that I have become. He is truly an honorable scholar and a mentor of a lifetime. Also, I deeply appreciate the valuable advice from Professor Yuh-chuan Shao and Yen-bin Chiou. Thanks to their insightful suggestions, I have the inspiration to carry on my writing. It is really my pleasure to discuss my thesis with these supportive professors. Second, my thankfulness goes to my dear classmates and friends. I would like to thank my fellow classmates Charmin Cheng, Lily Chang, Gary Chen, Angel Hsieh, Annie Shao, Kristy Fan, Vivian Lee, White Pak, and Susan Su, for their warm companionship. Thanks to these amazing classmates, my journey of NTNU MA program is full of unforgettable episodes and unprecedented joy. I am so blessed to be in the same class with these good-natured friends. In addition, I would like to give special thanks to Iris Pang, who makes my RA part-time job abundant with beautiful and enjoyable moments. My appreciation also goes to Lily Lee, May Lu, and Tracey Wang, my three bosom friends ever since NTNU BA freshmen year. Thank you for being kind and understanding whenever I am stressful during the journey of writing. Third, I deliver my genuine gratefulness with love to my family. Without the endless cheer and unconditional support given by my beloved family, it is impossible for me to finish this expedition of pursuing knowledge. I owe my deepest gratitude to my parents for giving me enough time and room to finish my prolonged explore; and I would like to give my most grateful love to my sister, for she cheers me up whenever I am in doubt of myself and gives me hope and courage to overcome every obstacle. Last but not least, I hope this thesis can be a humble form of remembrance of my friend Angela Wu, to always remember her as a hardworking and earnest individual in quest of inner peace. Table of Contents Introduction 1 I. Background and Motivation 1 II. Literature Review 7 III. Methodology 13 IV. Outline of Chapters 17 V. Expected Findings 19 Chapter One: North Korean Collective Memories 20 I. The Reshaping of North Korean Memories 20 II. Arduous March: The Famine of the 1990s 25 III. After the Great Escape: Defectors’ Complicated Identities 28 Chapter Two: The Analysis of North Korean Defectors’ 33 Traumatic Memories Representation I. Textual Representation of North Korean Gulag Memories in a 34 Global Context II. Reconstructing North Korean Gulag Memories beyond Words 40 A. Drawings 41 B. Body and Mental Scars 44 Chapter Three: The Reader’s Joint Responsibility for Reconstructing 47 North Korean Defection Testimony I. The Therapeutic Listener: The “Drilling” Process 49 II. Vicarious Trauma: Shin Dong-Hyuk’s Two Speeches 56 Conclusion 59 Works Cited 62 Liao 1 Introduction Convicted that this period in history would be judged one day, I knew that I must bear witness. I also knew that, while I had many things to say, I did not have the words to say them. Painfully aware of my limitations, I watched helplessly as language became an obstacle. It became clear that it would be necessary to invent a new language. - Elie Wiesel, Night (ix) I have regret. Is there anyone who wants to be famous by revealing their own scars? I feel that no one wants to be famous by revealing their privacy and past in this way. Sometimes I imagine what I would be like if I was born in America or some other foreign country. It’s only because I was born in the camp that it has become my destiny to reveal my past to people around the world. […]It’s both my fortune and my misfortune. - Shin Dong-Hyuk, 10 Magazine Korea I. Background and Motivation Annett Wieviorka regards twentieth century as “the era of witness” due to the booming of countless testimonies in the wake of two devastating World Wars and hundreds of minor but murderous conflicts. Atomic bombings, concentration camps, and many other man-made misfortunes have destroyed humanity on a large-scale, but the survivors of these atrocities still manage to pull through suffering and bear their physical and mental scars to tell the world what they have witnessed. Survivors’ urge to tell their stories, to remember their past is a unique means to withstand death in an Liao 2 era when death is omnipresent; and only through giving testimonies can the dead be rescued from nothingness and oblivion, and the silenced cries of victims be spoken out by “a new language.” Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor and Nobel Laureate, writes his Holocaust memoir under a moral obligation to “prevent the enemy from enjoying one last victory by allowing his crimes to be erased from human memory” (Night viii). He says “if the Greeks invented tragedy, the Romans the epistle, and the Renaissance the sonnet, our generation invented a new literature, that of testimony” (Dimensions of the Holocaust 9). Testimony as a new literary genre brings in the inherent doubt of accurately reconstructing traumatic experiences and the necessity to invent a new language, a new medium, to speak the unspeakable trauma. In the preface of Night, Wiesel points out the hazardous triangular relationship among the witness, the reader, and the medium to tell the story, such as verbal and written languages. The witness needs an agency to carry and transfer his testimony, but he is also aware that the agency cannot be fully trusted since every medium has its own limits and some traumatic experiences are bound to be inexpressible and uncontainable by any form of literary structures. Even if a way is figured out to convey the memory, the witness also wonders if the reader is ready to comprehend the atrocity despite the inescapable gaps between experience and expression. Likewise, when the reader engages in the discourse of the witness’ traumatic past, he is risking himself receiving a distorted or even a counterfeit testimony. However, it is worth considering why survivors of trauma might provide inconsistent or incorrect testimony, and what makes a testimony meaningful even if it can no longer convey objective truth. Wiesel’s concern about the possible failure of capturing factual truth in an account of traumatic experience does not mean to limit the testimony to simply providing facts, but, rather, it spotlights the complexity of reconstructing a valid testimony beyond Liao 3 empirical verification.

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