美国国家公共电台 NPR What Summit? On North Korean TV, The News Is All About Rice Farming

 

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

The proposed summit between the U.S. and North Korea is dominating headlines around the world - except in one place, North Korea itself. Our Seoul correspondent Elise Hu has a look at what North Koreans are learning in advance of the Singapore summit.

ELISE HU, BYLINE¹: The summit was off. Now it's likely back on. And the talk about it plays on every channel in America.

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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #1: President Trump² has spent weeks hyping his upcoming summit with North Korea.

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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #2: ...For months and months, and yet the summit was organized and was going to happen. Was the president...

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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #3: We've seen the president so eager for this meeting to happen.

HU: But what's dominating the news in North Korea?

CHAD O'CARROLL: North Korean TV news, the last few days, has mainly being about rice planting season. So it's a huge, huge difference.

HU: Chad O'Carroll monitors North Korean state media for his service nknews.org.

O'CARROLL: Seriously.

HU: What about rice planting season, I asked.

O'CARROLL: Well, now's the time. And they're showing, I guess, the farmers are at work.

HU: This leaves North Koreans largely in the dark about all the rushed diplomacy³ happening in the lead up to June 12. That's the scheduled date for a Trump-Kim summit. While a North Korean envoy⁴ met this week with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in New York, North Koreans saw none of that in their regular 5 and 8 pm national broadcasts. Martyn Williams knows. He records and watches state television every day. And state television is the only TV news North Koreans get.

MARTYN WILLIAMS: You can keep 25 million people completely in the dark. So the sort of propaganda apparatus⁵ and the way that the North Korean government tells different things to its people - and also restricts them from hearing things - is one of the things I was most interested in.

HU: Williams says when Kim met with South Korean leader Moon Jae-In in April, the world watched live while North Koreans did not.

WILLIAMS: It was kind of amazing that we were watching all that live, and they had absolutely no access to any of it. But, of course, that changed after the summit.

HU: A few days after that summit and meetings with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, state TV put together a half-hour documentary that place highlights they deem acceptable for the populace. This kind of information control, Williams says, gives the regime flexibility⁶ in case things don't work out.

WILLIAMS: There's a big risk for the North Koreans in kind of telegraphing too much to their own people ahead of time. So what they do is they wait until afterwards.

HU: North Koreans do know that a summit with the U.S. leader is coming up. But that's about it.

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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #4: (Speaking Korean).

HU: This is a North Korean state TV reference to the June 12 date and thanking South Korea for its effort in making things happen. Chad O'Carroll says the lack of coverage⁷ is normal in North Korea. But what has changed in North Korean news lately is its tone toward its traditional enemy the U.S.

O'CARROLL: The rhetoric⁸ was very angry, very anti-America. And that almost disappeared after Trump accepted that proposal for the summit.

HU: O'Carroll says the softer tone toward America is seen not just online, in newspapers and on television but even on the citizen-to-citizen propaganda level. He's talking about leaflets that are often dropped over or blown into the southern side of the border.

O'CARROLL: They used to find these things with cartoon depictions of Donald Trump being stamped on the side of a curb⁹, blood everywhere, or him having his toes sucked by the South Korean president - really pretty crude stuff.

HU: But that anti-American propaganda has now taken a more peaceful tone.

O'CARROLL: Some of them you would even have thought may have come from South Korea, like cartoon designs showing the Olympic mascots¹⁰.

HU: Those are from the February Winter Games in which the two Koreas fielded their first ever joint¹¹ team. If this kind of North Korean propaganda is any guide, signs of peace are appearing. Elise Hu, NPR News, Seoul.

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1 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

2 trump   

n.王牌，法宝；v.打出王牌，吹喇叭

参考例句：

• He was never able to trump up the courage to have a showdown.他始终鼓不起勇气摊牌。
• The coach saved his star player for a trump card.教练保留他的明星选手，作为他的王牌。

3 diplomacy   

n.外交；外交手腕，交际手腕

参考例句：

• The talks have now gone into a stage of quiet diplomacy.会谈现在已经进入了“温和外交”阶段。
• This was done through the skill in diplomacy. 这是通过外交手腕才做到的。

4 envoy   

n.使节，使者，代表，公使

参考例句：

• Their envoy showed no sign of responding to our proposals.他们的代表对我方的提议毫无回应的迹象。
• The government has not yet appointed an envoy to the area.政府尚未向这一地区派过外交官。

5 apparatus   

n.装置，器械；器具，设备

参考例句：

• The school's audio apparatus includes films and records.学校的视听设备包括放映机和录音机。
• They had a very refined apparatus.他们有一套非常精良的设备。

6 flexibility   

n.柔韧性，弹性，（光的）折射性，灵活性

参考例句：

• Her great strength lies in her flexibility.她的优势在于她灵活变通。
• The flexibility of a man's muscles will lessen as he becomes old.人老了肌肉的柔韧性将降低。

7 coverage   

n.报导，保险范围，保险额，范围，覆盖

参考例句：

• There's little coverage of foreign news in the newspaper.报纸上几乎没有国外新闻报道。
• This is an insurance policy with extensive coverage.这是一项承保范围广泛的保险。

8 rhetoric   

n.修辞学，浮夸之言语

参考例句：

• Do you know something about rhetoric?你懂点修辞学吗？
• Behind all the rhetoric,his relations with the army are dangerously poised.在冠冕堂皇的言辞背后，他和军队的关系岌岌可危。

9 curb   

n.场外证券市场，场外交易；vt.制止，抑制

参考例句：

• I could not curb my anger.我按捺不住我的愤怒。
• You must curb your daughter when you are in church.你在教堂时必须管住你的女儿。

10 mascots   

n.吉祥物( mascot的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• One of the mascots was the platypus. 吉祥物一是鸭嘴兽。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Information on all things Olympic, including logos, mascots, venues,and bid candidates. 所有事情奥林匹克，包括的标识语，吉祥物，地点，和出价候选人的信息。 来自互联网

11 joint   

adj.联合的，共同的；n.关节，接合处；v.连接，贴合

参考例句：

• I had a bad fall,which put my shoulder out of joint.我重重地摔了一跤，肩膀脫臼了。
• We wrote a letter in joint names.我们联名写了封信。