在朝鲜，我是一名“隐形”的西方记者

“时报内情”专栏(Times Insider)为读者呈现《纽约时报》新闻、专题报道及评论的幕后故事。

PYONGYANG, North Korea — We all knew that Pyongyang would be odd. But the strangeness of the place hit hard while on a morning jog last week during a visit to the North Korean capital by a State Department delegation and journalists covering it — including me.

朝鲜平壤——我们都知道，平壤会很奇怪。但上周美国国务院代表团及包括我在内的随行记者访问朝鲜首都期间，这个地方的奇特之处，是在晨跑的时候令我深有感触的。

The Paek Hwa Won Guesthouse had the feel of a minor Middle Eastern palace: gold carpets, jumpy staff and scores of empty rooms. Outside, a small lake with a brick path around its perimeter provided a running path for a jet-lagged reporter at 4 a.m.

百花园迎宾馆给人的感觉就像一座小型的中东宫殿：金色的地毯、紧张不安的员工和大量的空房间。酒店外面有个小湖，周围是一条砖砌的小路，它在凌晨4点为一名在倒时差的记者提供了跑步道。

Along the lake’s edge stood uniformed soldiers every 25 meters, carrying rifles with fixed bayonets. Each stiffened to attention as I jogged by and made a show of looking away, although one or two glanced in my direction once I had passed.

沿着湖边，每隔25米就有身穿制服的士兵拿着带刺刀的步枪站在那里。当我慢跑经过他们的时候，大家都挺直了身板，装作在看别处的样子，尽管有一两个人朝着我的方向瞟了一眼。

On my second loop around, all but two of the soldiers had melted into the shrubbery and disappeared.

在我跑第二圈的时候，除了两名士兵外，其他人都消失在了灌木丛中。

At one point, I headed for one of the compound’s exits. Two workers joined me, never looking my way, until we reached some sort of invisible line where one suddenly turned and gestured that I could go no farther. The studious lack of attention was the oddest part of the American delegation’s 28 hours in North Korea. We were all but invisible.

我一度朝着院子的一个出口跑去。两名工作人员加入我，却并不看我，直到我们来到了某种肉眼看不见的边界，其中一人突然转身，示意我不能再往前了。故意无视是美国代表团在朝鲜停留的28个小时里最奇怪的部分。我们几乎是隐形的。

“That was probably state-sponsored indoctrination,” said Sung-Yoon Lee of Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in Medford, Mass. “And at the guesthouse, I’m sure it was government diktat.”

“这很可能是国家教导的结果，”马萨诸塞州梅德福市塔夫茨大学(Tufts University)弗莱彻法律外交学院(Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy)的李晟允(Lee Sung-Yoon)说。“在宾馆里，我肯定那是政府的命令。”

Our motorcade’s vehicles were almost the only ones on the road between the empty airport and central Pyongyang, but workers in fields and bicyclists and pedestrians on sidewalks did not seem to look toward us.

在连接空荡荡的机场和平壤市中心之间的道路上，我们的车队几乎是唯一的车辆，但田里的劳动者，路上骑自行车的人和行人，似乎都不会朝我们看。

During a tour of Pyongyang, uniformly well-dressed residents went about their business as if we were not there. The lone exceptions were young children, who stared.

在一次游览平壤的行程中，穿着统一的考究衣服的居民们忙着自己的事情，对我们似乎视而不见。唯一的例外是小孩子，他们会盯着我们看。

Veteran North Korean experts counseled against making too much of the disconnect. They said North Koreans go to restaurants, work in hospitals and struggle with the same issues humans everywhere do.

资深的朝鲜问题专家建议，不要过分强调这种隔断。他们说，朝鲜人也会下馆子，也会在医院工作，其他地方的人有的问题他们也有。

“It’s not that the people of North Korea are abnormal, it’s that their system is,” said Frank Jannuzi, the president of the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation and a Korea scholar who has visited the North many times.

莫琳和迈克·曼斯菲尔德基金会(Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation)会长、多次访问朝鲜的朝韩问题学者弗兰克·詹努齐(Frank Jannuzi)说：“不正常的不是朝鲜人民，是他们的制度。”

On the hourslong city tour, which was organized for reporters by the North Korean Foreign Ministry, we saw perhaps a few thousand people in the capital of a country with 25 million residents. Many wore white uniforms, and some clipped patches of grass with small shears.

在朝鲜外交部为记者组织的这个长达数小时的市区观光行程中，我们在这个拥有2500万人口的国家的首都，看到了大约几千人。许多人都穿着白色的制服，有些人在用小修剪刀修剪一块块的草地。

At the foot of giant bronze statues of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il, the country’s founding father and his son, at the Grand Monument on Mansu Hill, groups of citizens laid flowers and bowed in choreographed waves.

在万寿台大纪念碑广场，金日成和金正日(朝鲜国父及其子)的巨大铜像脚下，一群群的民众在献花，整齐划一地一批批鞠躬。

When Secretary of State Mike Pompeo travels abroad, his schedule is usually planned to the minute. But in the days leading up to the trip to North Korea, diplomats said they were uncertain how it would unfold, where we would stay, how we would communicate with the outside world and even what stamp we would need in our passports.

国务卿迈克·庞皮欧(Mike Pompeo)的出国访问日程通常是精确到以分钟计算的。但在前往朝鲜之前的几天里，外交官们表示，他们不确定一切会如何进行——包括我们将在哪里下榻，如何与外界沟通，甚至在护照上需要盖什么章。

On the final leg of the flight into Pyongyang, the secretary’s security staff looked as edgy as they had the previous year during a visit to Kabul, Afghanistan, when rockets were raining down on the air base there.

在飞往平壤的最后一段路程中，国务卿的保安人员看上去就像前一年访问阿富汗的喀布尔时一样紧张，当时火箭弹正如雨点般袭击那里的空军基地。

One of the diplomats on the flight asked for the numbers for any cellphones we journalists planned to bring into Pyongyang. We were counseled to turn off our mobiles — or at least shut down their ability to communicate — because “sometimes phones can behave erratically” long after leaving North Korea, ostensibly from exposure to surveillance.

飞机上的一位外交官询问了我们记者计划带入平壤的手机号码。我们被建议关闭手机——或至少关闭它们的通讯功能——因为在离开朝鲜之后很久，“手机有时会表现得很不稳定”，显然是因为受到监控的缘故。

State Department officials were so convinced that their every move was being watched that, even when they walked outside the guesthouse, they covered their mouths when whispering to each other so no one could read their lips.

国务院官员非常确信，他们的一举一动都受到监视，即使在酒店外散步时，他们也总是捂着嘴巴互相耳语，以防别人读他们的唇语。

Kim Kwang-hak, our North Korean government minder, made clear he was all too aware of the world beyond Pyongyang’s bubble as he took careful note of the media organization for which each of his charges worked.

朝鲜政府为我们派的保镖金光学(Kim Kwang-hak，音)明确表示，他非常清楚平壤泡泡之外的世界，因为现在由他负责的所有媒体组织，他都认真关注过。

“In this van, no fake news? No CNN or NBC?” he asked with a laugh.

“这辆面包车里没有假新闻?没有CNN和NBC?”他笑着问道。