South Korean Pop Culture Looks North With Warmth, Not Fear
SEOUL, South Korea -- In a recent TV commercial here for Samsung cellphones, a famous South Korean singer meets a North Korean dancer onstage and the women join hands and sing.
As the music swells, a banner unfurls to reveal a united Korean peninsula. The theme is becoming more common in South Korean culture: In movies and television shows, too, people from North and South come together to overcome common foes or work for the greater good.
That might seem odd, given that North Korea has enough artillery and rockets aimed at the 12 million residents of Seoul to destroy the South Korean capital. Pyongyang's detonation of a nuclear device roughly 190 miles northeast of here earlier this month might also be expected to incur southerners' wrath, or at least their suspicion.
The leader of South Korea's ruling Uri party, Kim Geun Tae (second from right), traveled across the border this month to toast solidarity with North Korean workers.
Yet, many South Koreans reject international calls to punish the North for its nuclear ambitions.
In part, this attitude stems from South Korean views that the North, with its economy in disarray, is far less menacing than in the past. South Koreans' continued embrace of the North, however, masks a feeling that almost anything that can now be said or done to the North and its dictator Kim Jong Il will just make things worse. From the southern perspective, the addition of nuclear weapons does little to change the equation.
Indeed, the South Korean reaction to the Oct. 9 nuclear test has been blasé.
A few days ago, the chairman of South Korea's ruling party visited a factory complex just across the border and toasted to solidarity with North Korea's workers. He ironed clothes at a garment factory and danced with local waitresses. The politician, Kim Geun Tae, later apologized -- but only for the dancing, which he called "inappropriate and careless."
Only a day earlier, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had visited Seoul and urged South Korean leaders to get tough with Pyongyang. For eight years, South Korea's government has preached conciliation with the North, stressing the common ties and interests that unite fellow Koreans on both sides of the demilitarized zone separating two countries that technically remain at war since a 1953 truce halted three years of full-scale combat.
But underlying that policy is fear that sanctions and threats will lead to an outbreak of hostilities -- or, almost as worrying to many Southerners, an economic collapse in the North that will leave South Korea with the primary burden, and cost, of rebuilding its neighbor.
Candid discussions about the problems surrounding unification nonetheless are rare in the government and media, says Kim Moon Soo, the governor of Gyeonggi province, which borders North Korea. Discussions about Pyongyang's human-rights atrocities are squelched by some for fear of upsetting the regime of dictator Kim Jong Il -- something the governor objects to. "North Korean human rights must be addressed if we want to achieve unification based on democracy and freedom," he says.
South Korea started a policy of engagement in 1998 under then-president Kim Dae Jung, hoping to guide the North toward economic liberalization and to narrow the wide gap between the two. Soon after, the unity theme began seeping into South Korean pop culture.
Movies about North and South Korean soldiers working together are a common trope. In 2000, the film "Joint Security Area" shocked audiences by depicting a North and South soldier who become friends in the demilitarized zone. "Welcome to Dong Mak Gol," one of South Korea's biggest grossers last year, portrayed troops from the two sides who destroy a village during their Korean War skirmishes -- then come together to rebuild it.
Another hit from last year, "Heaven's Soldiers," shows the North and South jointly developing a nuclear weapon.
In the South, however, idealized portrayals of a unified Korea haven't changed the perception that the actual process of reunification will be difficult.
"I see these ads and movies, but they show reunification in a superficial way," says Yun Nam Hui, an unemployed 27-year-old resident of Seoul. Mr. Yun, who says he understood how difficult and costly real unification would be after doing military service, isn't eager for it to happen anytime soon. "We want unification because we're one people, but the differences of regimes and the economic pressures make it very difficult."
North Koreans who have defected often find it difficult to adjust to life in the South, and some say they feel they are victims of prejudice by South Koreans, who, they say, view them as lazy.
Jang Sung Hyuk, a 36-year-old manager at a software company, grew up reading comic books that portrayed North Koreans as wolves and then-dictator Kim Il Sung as a pig. His perceptions changed as he grew up and the South surpassed the North economically.
"Unification is something we of course want," Mr. Jang says. But it would be "very costly and very hard," he adds. "Perhaps 50 or 100 years, or more."
韩国人的统一情结
最近在首尔播放的一则三星手机电视广告中，一位韩国女歌星与一名朝鲜舞蹈演员在舞台上走到一起，随后携手同唱。伴随乐曲的进行，象征朝鲜半岛统一的旗帜在两人身后徐徐展开。
有关朝鲜半岛统一的话题正日益渗透进韩国文化、成为流行元素。不论是在电影还是在电视作品中，人们都能看到表现朝鲜和韩国民众同仇敌忾或携手共创美好未来的情景。
这听上去或许有点难以置信，因为朝鲜目前正有数百枚导弹瞄准有1,200万人口的首尔，这些导弹可以在几分钟之内将这座城市夷为平地。本月早些时候，朝鲜在距首尔东北部约300公里处试验核武器的举动应该也让韩国更加人心惶惶。
但韩国人对朝鲜10月9日核试验的反应实在平淡无奇，甚至可以说平淡地让人奇怪。本月早些时候，韩国执政党开放国民党党主席金槿泰(Kim Geun Tae)越过朝韩边境走访了一个工业园区。他在那里与朝鲜员工大谈团结，还在一家制衣厂亲自熨烫衣服，甚至与朝鲜女服务员一起跳舞。金槿泰之后迫于压力对跳舞之事表示了道歉，称他的行为“不够恰当、欠缺考虑”。就在那之前一天，美国国务卿赖斯(Condoleezza Rice)刚刚出访韩国，她在与韩国领导人会晤期间敦促韩国对平壤采取强硬政策。
过去八年来，韩国政府始终对朝鲜奉行安抚政策，并强调共同的纽带和利益实际已将非军事区两边的人民紧密联系了起来。非军事区的存在从理论上标志着两国仍处于交战状态。
韩国对朝鲜奉行妥协政策的根本原因在于韩国担心制裁或者军事威胁将导致两国爆发冲突。另外，许多韩国人还担心朝鲜经济一旦崩溃，韩国将独立承担起帮助朝鲜重建家园的主要责任。
韩国统一部(Ministry of Unification)负责加强与朝鲜的联系，同时避免与朝鲜走得过近。统一部有一个办公室通过在小学安排有关朝鲜的课程来加强与朝鲜的联系。另一个办公室则要求教堂和人权组织停止通过放飞气球来发送可能激怒朝鲜的传单。统一部部长李钟口(Lee Jong Seok)上周宣布辞职。他表示，在朝鲜试验核武器之后，卢武铉总统(Roh Moo Hyun)需要一位新人来处理韩朝政策。
京畿道知事金文洙(Kim Moon Soo)表示，在政府里和媒体上就统一话题直抒胸臆的现象并不多见。一些韩国人不同意对朝鲜侵犯人权的行为大加讨伐，他们担心这会导致金正日政权的瓦解。但金文洙则持不同看法，他表示，如果朝韩希望在民主和自由的基础上实现统一，朝鲜的人权问题就必须得到解决。
自1998年起，在时任总统金大中(Kim Dae Jung)倡导下，韩国开始对朝鲜采取接触政策。金大中希望用这一政策来劝说朝鲜开放经济，缩小两国生活水平的巨大差异。此后没过多久，统一的话题就开始逐渐进入韩国的流行文化。
在这股潮流带动下，韩国创作了大量有关朝鲜和韩国的士兵共同完成某项使命的影片。例如2000年上演的《共同警戒区》就给观众带来了强烈震撼，该片描述了一名朝鲜士兵与一名韩国士兵在边境的非军事区成为好友的过程。去年韩国票房位居前列的影片《欢迎来到东莫村》(Welcome to Dong Mak Gol)讲述的是朝鲜战争期间，在交火中毁坏了一座村庄的朝、韩士兵之后携手重建这个村庄的故事。
去年的另一部“时间旅行”类型的大片《天军》虚构了一个朝鲜和韩国秘密联手开发核武器的故事。在影片中，两国士兵阴错阳差地被带回到了十六世纪，并在那里最终共同将来自满洲里和日本的侵略者赶出了家园。
这种给人好感的表达统一愿望的讯息也会出现在市场营销活动中。韩国最大的电信企业韩国电气通信公司(KT Corp.)今年6月播放的一则电视广告中就用了一个朝鲜家庭为韩国国家足球队在世界杯比赛喝彩的情景。为了让这个朝鲜家庭从外形上与韩国人区分开来以强化短片的效果，他们请来了中国演员出演朝鲜人。
去年，三星电子(Samsung Electronics Co.)决定由其主要代言人、韩国明星李孝利(Lee Hyo Lee)和朝鲜传统音乐舞蹈团的成员Cho Myong Ae携手代言其品牌。Cho Myong Ae在几年前曾随朝鲜一个亲善代表团访问韩国并轰动一时。她们两人在这部系列广告的第一部中通过剪辑技术在画面上“会面”了。在后面的广告片中，随着李孝利和Cho Myong Ae终于在中国“见面”（因为Cho Myong Ae未获准前往韩国）并共同表演了节目，这场营销活动被推向了高潮。
负责制作这部广告的代理公司当时表示，这部系列广告“克服了意识形态上的差别并拓宽了广告的伸展天地。”三星公司及这家广告公司的管理人员拒绝就此置评。
“我看了这些广告和电影，不过它们是以一种肤浅的方式展示了重新统一的愿望，”27岁的首尔居民Yun Nam Hui说。目前尚未就业的Yun Nam Hui说，他服过兵役后理解到真正实现统一需要克服的困难和付出的代价。他并不希望很快统一。“我们希望统一，因为我们属于同一个民族。但是社会体制的差异以及经济压力使实现统一变得很困难。”
在韩国，并不是所有关于朝鲜的描述都是好的。对朝鲜半岛统一的理想化描述也没有改变人们关于实际统一过程将充满艰辛的想法。韩国报纸和电视经常播放投奔韩国的朝鲜人在适应当地生活时所面临的种种挑战。甚至在语言方面都会遇到障碍，因为现在韩国人用的很多词都来自英语。
在韩国一家软件公司担任经理的Jang Sung Hyuk今年36岁。小时候他看的漫画书里都会将朝鲜人描绘成狼的样子，朝鲜领袖金日成(Kim Il Sung)则被形容为猪。随着他的逐渐长大以及韩国与朝鲜的经济差距日益拉大，他对朝鲜的观念也发生了变化。
“统一当然是我们想要的，”Jang Sung Hyuk说。但是，这是一件“代价高昂且非常困难的事情，”他补充道。他还说，统一或许可以在相当长一段时间内逐步地实现。
他说：“或许还需要50、100年，甚至更长的时间。”
Evan Ramstad / Gordon Fairclough
