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

Abstract

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。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.