正視韓國在越戰中的傷痛

正視韓國在越戰中的傷痛

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國際先驅論壇報 唐・柯克報導

2002年9月28日

如果說韓戰是美國的「被遺忘的戰爭」，那麼越戰對韓國人而言，正填補了同樣的歷史位置。當韓國人回顧他們現代史上的重大悲劇——造成超過兩百萬人死亡的韓戰時，很少有人記得他們的國家為何或如何作為美國收買的盟友，在越南的叢林中作戰。

美國說服韓國獨裁者朴正熙，派遣他最精銳的兩個整編師前往越南。回報很明確：美國將繼續支持朴正熙，因為他對人民施加壓力——強行通過一部剝奪言論自由的憲法——並且保證提供他所想要的所有部隊、武器和資金，以抵禦北韓的威脅。韓國士兵在越戰中贏得了最兇猛、最殘酷部隊的惡名。

在1960年代至70年代初，那些甘願冒著坐牢與酷刑風險的異議人士，極少（如果有的話）會針對韓國派兵越南進行抗議。當時有首歌曲，歌名大致可譯為〈從越南歸來的金班長〉，它將韓國士兵當作英雄般歡迎歸國。

這首歌在韓國人的集體意識中流傳至今——既感人又縈繞心頭，既琅琅上口又令人振奮。如今，它在國立劇場的節目《藍色西貢》中重獲新生。一位躺在病床上的垂死男子——一名越戰老兵——回顧他當年身為士兵所帶來的痛苦。飾演這位老兵金文錫班長的是李在煥，他在一場所有弟兄皆戰死沙場、唯獨自己倖存的戰爭結束多年後，仍在痛苦中掙扎。

《藍色西貢》的導演權皓成（同時負責作曲，並與金廷淑共同作詞）表示，這齣六年前在首爾首次製作的戲劇，並非意在表達反戰立場。「你在任何地方都找不到反戰的字眼，」他說，「但整齣戲都在講述戰爭的悲劇，所以它傳達了一種不言而喻的反戰訊息。」

權導演的父親曾以隊長身份在越南服役，因此他深知《藍色西貢》所觸及的敏感議題。「我父親批評這齣戲，因為所有韓國士兵都陣亡了，看起來像是越共贏了，」他說。父親問他：「你為什麼要製作一齣關於失敗的音樂劇？」

與百老匯和倫敦西區的經典劇目《西貢小姐》——一個關於1975年西貢撤離時愛與失落的故事——不同，《藍色西貢》講的不是戰爭的最終失敗。它講述的是1967年，在溪山附近叢林中一次巡邏任務的徒勞無功。溪山是美國海軍陸戰隊的基地，後來在1968年遭到北越與越共部隊圍攻後棄守。

這齣戲也描繪了由姜孝相飾演的越南酒吧女侍的痛苦。她在韓國演出音樂劇與話劇已有20年。她愛上了金班長，但與她狂熱的弟弟同為越共成員，並向越共出賣了韓國士兵。與《西貢小姐》（權導說該劇並未給予他創作靈感）類似，劇中有酒吧女郎在歌舞場面中跳躍起舞，而主要人物——班長與酒吧女侍——則唱著抒情歌，她的越共弟弟則沉醉於殺戮慾望。劇中甚至一度出現直升機螺旋槳呼嘯的聲音，不過幸好沒有那種可能引來更多與《西貢小姐》比較的壯觀直升機場景。

「背景是越戰，」製作團隊的經理黃景煥說，「但我們試圖展現的是一個普世主題，不僅僅是歷史的偶然，而是人類的悲劇、戰爭的悲傷、戰爭的瘋狂。」這種瘋狂透過一些諷刺情節表現出來。金班長在韓國垂死之際，回想起小時候曾被入侵的北韓軍隊逼迫，去揭發他南方家鄉中那些反共人士。在越南，他和酒吧女侍生下了一個兒子。最後，這個兒子來到韓國，想看看他父親的土地——此時父親已去世，並非死於戰傷，而是美軍為清除大片叢林所使用的「橙劑」所留下的後遺症。

權導說，他和金廷淑原本想將此劇命名為《從越南歸來》，但最後決定採用貫穿全劇的主題曲名《藍色西貢》，希望能吸引年輕一代。「年輕人完全不了解『越南』這個名字的意義，」權導說。而「藍色」被韓國人理解為代表憂傷的代號，能夠傳達班長與酒吧女侍關係中的悲劇性。

「其他的文件、電影和書籍只會讚揚我們如何贏得勝利，」權導說，「我想描寫那些陣亡的士兵，想表達戰爭並不總是成功的。描繪一場勝利的戰爭並不重要。」

他補充道，就韓國參與越戰而言，愛國主義並非驅使士兵志願參戰的唯一動機。「實際上，表面上他們作戰的理由是保衛國家，」權導說，但這種邏輯只對那些認為南北越之爭類似於韓國對抗北韓的人來說才有意義。除此之外，還得相信一種延伸的骨牌理論——亦即北越與南方共產黨的勝利，將會在朝鮮半島長期的對峙中引發同樣的結局。

權導還說：「許多人志願去越南是為了賺錢。在那裡待上一年，士兵可以賺到可觀的金額」——這筆錢是正常軍餉之外的獎金。「回到家鄉，他們可以用賺來的錢買房子、買農田裡的牛。」他說，在那個年代，「韓國非常貧窮，這筆獎金對一些人來說影響重大。」儘管如此，「那些去越南的人肯定認為他們是為了韓國而戰，」權導補充道，「我們的貢獻對經濟幫助很大。」

多年以後，韓國人是否應該對他們在越南的遭遇、或他們在那裡所做的一切感到內疚？

「金班長一生都飽受內疚感所苦，」權導說。這種內疚感透過一種超現實的場景表現出來：一個女人像幽靈般出現在他的臨終床邊，唱著〈藍色西貢〉。

這位由另一位韓國音樂劇資深演員李成真飾演的女子告訴他，是時候放下他曾經施加與承受的痛苦了。這場恐怖的遺留之一，是金班長那個坐輪椅的女兒。她因為父親體內橙劑的影響而天生帶有缺陷。「爸爸，爸爸，我這裡、全身都不舒服，」她說。與此同時，他同父異母的兄弟——由越南酒吧女侍所生——則幻滅地說：「我終於來到了我父親的土地。」

「這種事情不常被談論，」權導說，「這是一場被遺忘的戰爭。橙劑就是一個例子。沒有任何韓國士兵因為橙劑造成的痛苦而獲得補償。」不過，他補充說：「這齣戲並非刻意聚焦於社會議題。我的用意是要觸動人心。」從某些觀眾震驚到沉默或落淚的反應來看，《藍色西貢》已經在那些仍關心自己國家在一場已逐漸從集體記憶中淡忘的骯髒衝突中所扮演角色的少數韓國人心中，找到了共鳴。

https://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/28/style/IHT-confronting-koreas-agony-in-vietnam.html

Confronting Korea's agony in Vietnam

By Don Kirk, International Herald Tribune

• Sept. 28, 2002

If the Korean conflict was America's "forgotten war," then Vietnam fills the same historical niche for Koreans. While looking back on the great tragedy of their modern history, the Korean War, in which more than 2 million people died, few Koreans remember how or why their country fought as America's bought-and-paid-for ally in the jungles of Vietnam.

The United States persuaded the Korean dictator, Park Chung Hee, to send two full divisions of his best troops to Vietnam. The payoff was clear. The United States would go on supporting Park as he tightened the screws on his people — ramming through a constitution that stripped away free-speech rights — and would guarantee defense against North Korea with all the troops, weapons and money he wanted. The Korean soldiers won a reputation as the toughest and cruelest of any units from any force in the Vietnam War.

Dissidents who were willing to risk jail and torture during the era of the 1960s and early '70s rarely, if ever, demonstrated against the Korean presence in Vietnam. A song of the time, whose title translates roughly as, "Sergeant Kim Returning From Vietnam," welcomed the Korean soldiers home as heroes.

The song endures in the Korean consciousness — touching and haunting, catchy and uplifting. And its spirit lives again, as part of a show called "Blue Saigon," at the National Theater. A dying man in a hospital bed, a Vietnam veteran, looks back on the suffering he inflicted as a soldier. He is Sergeant Kim Moon Suk, played by Lee Jae Hwan, writhing in agony years after a war in which he survived while all his men were killed in battle.

The director of "Blue Saigon," Kwon Ho Sung, who wrote the music and collaborated on the lyrics with Kim Jung Sook, said they did not intend the show, first produced here six years ago, as an anti-war statement. "You can't find anti-war words anywhere," he said. "But the whole show is about the tragedy of the war, so it has an unspoken anti-war message."

Kwon, whose father served as a captain in Vietnam, is aware of the sensitivities that "Blue Saigon" probes. "My father criticizes this show because all the Korean soldiers got killed and it appears the Viet Cong won the game," he said. "Why," his father has asked him, "did you make a musical of defeat?"

Unlike the Broadway and West End classic, "Miss Saigon," a story of love found and lost in the evacuation of Saigon in 1975, "Blue Saigon" is not about final defeat in the war. It's about the futility of a single patrol in 1967 in the jungle near Khe Sanh, the U.S. Marine base that was abandoned after a siege by North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops in 1968.

The show is also about the suffering of a Vietnamese bar hostess, played by Kang Hyo Sang, who has been appearing in musicals and plays in Korea for 20 years. She loves the sergeant, but is a member (with her fanatical brother) of the Viet Cong, to whom she betrays the Koreans. Like "Miss Saigon," which Kwon says did not provide inspiration for the show, bar girls prance and dance through production numbers while the major figures, the sergeant and the hostess, sing ballads and her Viet Cong brother revels in bloodlust. There is even at one point the roar of whirling helicopter blades, though thankfully no great copter scene that might encourage still more comparisons with "Miss Saigon."

"The background is the Vietnam War," said Hwang Kyeong Hwan, a manager on the production team, "but what we're trying to show is a universal theme, not just an accident of history but the tragedy of human beings, the sadness of war, the craziness of war." The craziness comes through in some of the ironies. Sergeant Kim, while dying back in Korea, remembers having been forced as a child by invading North Korean troops to betray people who were known to be anti-communist in his southern village. In Vietnam, he and the bar hostess have a son who, in the end, visits Korea to see the land of his father, by this time dead, the victim not of wounds but of the lingering after-effects of the Agent Orange used by the Americans to deforest wide areas of jungle.

Kwon said that he and Kim Jung Sook had originally wanted to call the show "Return From Vietnam," but decided on "Blue Saigon," the recurring theme song, in hopes of appealing to a younger generation. "Young people don't understand the name 'Vietnam' at all," said Kwon, whereas "blue," understood by Koreans as a code word for sad, would convey the tragedy of the sergeant and the hostess's relationship.

"Other documents, movies and books just praise how we won the game," said Kwon. "I wanted to describe the soldiers who were killed, to show that war is not always a success. It's not important to portray a victorious war."

In the case of Korean participation in Vietnam, he added, patriotism was not the only motive that compelled soldiers to volunteer to go. "Actually, the reason on the surface for them to fight was to protect the country," said Kwon, but that logic made sense only to those who saw the struggle between South and North Vietnam as analogous to South Korea's defense against North Korea. Beyond that level, one had to believe in a kind of extended domino theory — that victory for North Vietnam and the communists in the south would precipitate the same denouement in the protracted standoff for the Korean peninsula.

And, said Kwon, "Many people volunteered to go to Vietnam to make money. At the end of a year there, a soldier could earn a sizable amount" — in the form of a bonus added on to one's regular military pay. "Back home they could buy homes, cows for their farms, with all the money they earned." In those days he said, "Korea was very poor, and the bonus made all the difference to some people." Nonetheless, "Those who went there definitely thought they fought for Korea," Kwon added. "Our contribution did a lot for the economy."

Should Koreans, years later, feel guilty about whatever happened to them, whatever they did, in Vietnam?

"Sergeant Kim has been suffering from guilt feelings all his life," said Kwon. The guilt comes through in other-worldly scenes in which a woman appears ghost-like by his deathbed, singing "Blue Saigon."

The woman, played by Lee Sung Jin, another veteran of Korean musicals, tells him it's time to leave behind the suffering he inflicted and endured. One legacy of the horror is Sergeant Kim's wheelchair-bound daughter, born with birth defects caused by the Agent Orange in her father's system. "Daddy, Daddy, I'm sick here, everywhere," she says. Her half-brother, meanwhile, born of the Vietnamese bar hostess, says in disillusionment, "I finally came to my father's land."

"Such things are not talked about often," Kwon said. "It's a war that has been forgotten. Agent Orange is one example. None of the Korean soldiers were compensated for Agent Orange suffering." But, he added, "this drama is not intentionally focused on social issues."

"My intention was to touch the human heart." Judging by the response of some members of the audience, stunned into silence or tears, "Blue Saigon" has found its target among the few South Koreans still concerned about their country's role in a nasty conflict that has largely faded from collective memory.