In order to live
最近花了两个星期的时间，才看完了这本书，看看停停，这本书写的实在是太真实，太伤感了。
一个女孩在13岁到18岁之间经历了什么？
严密的监视、常年的饥饿、父亲过世、姐姐走失、母亲被卖、被买卖、被强奸、常年的逃亡，不被接受......
【TED】我的北韩逃亡，没有告诉你的：一个更具体、更沉重、也更加血淋淋的世界
Even the Birds and Mice Can Hear You Whisper
The country I grew up in was not like the one my parents had known aschildren in the 1960s and 1970s.
When they were young, the state tookcare of everyone’s basic needs: clothes, medical care,food.
在60、70年代，国家会照顾你的一切。
After the Cold War ended, the Communist countries that had been propping up the North Korean regime all but abandoned it, and our state-controlled economy collapsed.
North Koreans were suddenly on their own.
冷战结束后，国家经济崩溃，个人自力更生。
I was too young to realize how desperate things were becoming in thegrown-up world, as my family tried to adapt to the massive changes in NorthKorea during the 1990s.
After my sister and I were asleep, my parents wouldsometimes lie awake, sick with worry, wondering what they could do to keepus all from starving to death.
父母经常担心，我们会被饿死。
Anything I did overhear, I learned quickly not to repeat.
I was taughtnever to express my opinion, never to question anything.
I was taught tosimply follow what the government told me to do or say or think.
I actuallybelieved that our Dear Leader, Kim Jong Il, could read my mind, and I wouldbe punished for my bad thoughts.
And if he didn’t hear me, spies wereeverywhere, listening at the windows and watching in the school yard.
We allbelonged to inminban, or neighborhood“people’s units,”and we wereordered to inform on anyone who said the wrong thing.
在成长的过程中，被密切监视。
We lived in fear, andalmost everyone—my mother included—had a personal experience thatdemonstrated the dangers of talking.
金日成之死惹来的麻烦。
I was only nine months old when Kim Il Sung died on July 8, 1994. NorthKoreans worshipped the eighty-two-year-old“Great Leader.”
九个月大的时候，金日成死了。人们陷入极大悲痛当中。
At the time ofhis death, Kim Il Sung had ruled North Korea with an iron grip for almostfive decades, and true believers—my mother included—thought that Kim IlSung was actually immortal.
His passing was a time of passionate mourning,and also uncertainty in the country.
The Great Leader’s son, Kim Jong Il, hadalready been chosen to succeed his father, but the huge void Kim Il Sung leftbehind had everyone on edge.
My mother strapped me on her back to join the thousands of mournerswho daily flocked to the plaza-like Kim Il Sung monument in Hyesan toweep and wail for the fallen Leader during the official mourning period.
Themourners left offerings of flowers and cups of rice liquor to show theiradoration and grief.
During that time, one of my father’s relatives was visiting from northeastChina, where many ethnic North Koreans lived.
在这期间父亲的亲戚来访，并讲述了一个他听来的谣言。
Because he was a foreigner,he was not as reverent about the Great Leader, and when my mother cameback from one of her trips to the monument, Uncle Yong Soo repeated a story he had just heard.
The Pyongyang government had announced that Kim Il Sung had died of a heart attack, but Yong Soo reported that a Chinese friend told him he had heard from a North Korean police officer that it wasn’t true.
The real cause of death, he said, was hwa-byung—a common diagnosis in both North and South Korea that roughly translates into“disease caused by mental or emotional stress.”
谣言说金正日不是死于心脏病而是由精神压力引起的火病（hwa-byung）
火病(朝鲜语:화병)是朝鲜民族特有的文化遗存综合症(culture-bound syndrome)，是一种精神疾病。这种疾病源自朝鲜民族以恨(한)为基础的民族文化情绪，患者因在生活中遭遇苦恼却无处发泄愤怒而出现精神疾病，在社会阶层较低的更年期女性中尤为常见。表现出的症状为，胸闷及身体疲乏，失眠和神经性厌食症，性机能障碍症并发之可能性也很大。
Yong Soo had heard that there were disagreements between Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il over the elder Kim’s plans to hold talks with South Korea. . . .
“Stop!”my mother said.
“Don’t say another word!”She was so upset that Yong Soo would dare to spread rumors about the regime that she had to be rude to her guest and shut him up.
The next day she and her best friend were visiting the monument to place more flowers when they noticed someone had vandalized the offerings.
作者的母亲把她听到的谣言告诉了她最好的朋友。
“Oh, there are such bad people in this world!”her friend said.
“You are so right!”my mother said.“You wouldn’t believe the evil rumor that our enemies have been spreading.”
And then she told her friend about the lies she had heard.
然后她受到了官员的审查盘问，以至于她甚至觉得自己会因此而死。
The following day she was walking across the Cloud Bridge when she noticed an official-looking car parked in the lane below our house, and a large group of men gathered around it.
She immediately knew something awful was about to happen.
The visitors were plainclothes agents of the dreaded bo-wi-bu, or National Security Agency, that ran the political prison camps and investigated threats to the regime.
Everybody knew these men could take you away and you would never be heard from again.
Worse, these weren’t locals; they had been sent from headquarters.
The senior agent met my mother at our door and led her to our neighbor’s house, which he had borrowed for the afternoon.
They both sat, and he looked at her with eyes like black glass.
“Do you know why I’m here?”he asked.
“Yes, I do,”she said.
“So where did you hear that?”he said.
She told him she’d heard the rumor from her husband’s Chinese uncle, who had heard it from a friend.
“What do you think of it?”he said.
“It’s a terrible, evil rumor!”she said, most sincerely.
“It’s a lie told by our enemies who are trying to destroy the greatest nation in the world!”
“What do you think you have done wrong?”he said, flatly.
“Sir, I should have gone to the party organization to report it.
I was wrong to just tell it to an individual.”
“No, you are wrong,”he said.
“You should never have let those words out of your mouth.”
Now she was sure she was going to die.
She kept telling him she was sorry, begging to spare her life for the sake of her two babies.
As we say in Korea, she begged until she thought her hands would wear off.
Finally, he said in a sharp voice that chilled her bones,“You must never mention this again.
Not to your friends or your husband or your children.
Do you understand what will happen if you do?”
She did. Completely.
Next he interrogated Uncle Yong Soo, who was nervously waiting with the family at our house.
My mother thinks that she was spared any punishment because Yong Soo confirmed to the agent how angry she had been when he told her the rumor.
When it was over, the agents rode away in their car.
My uncle went back to China.
When my father asked my mother what the secret police wanted from her, she said it was nothing she could talk about, and never mentioned it again.
My father went to his grave without knowing how close they had come to disaster.
严密监视的后果。就是父母在孩子成长的过程中，从来不对孩子说关心的话，只让他们管好自己的嘴巴，别乱说话。
Many years later, after she told me her story, I finally understood why when my mother sent me off to school she never said,“Have a good day,”or even,“Watch out for strangers.”
What she always said was,“Take care of your mouth.”
In most countries, a mother encourages her children to ask about everything, but not in North Korea.
As soon as I was old enough to understand, my mother warned me that I should be careful about what I was saying.
“Remember, Yeonmi-ya,”she said gently,“even when you think you’re alone, the birds and mice can hear you whisper.”
She didn’t mean to scare me, but I felt a deep darkness and horror inside me.
