特朗普应与韩国密切合作

For someone who spends so much time talking about the threat from North Korea perhaps Donald Trump should try working more closely with the country directly in the line of fire of the dictator in Pyongyang. During his 11-day tour of Asia, the US president is spending more time in every other country he visits than he is in South Korea, a staunch American ally and ground zero in any future confrontation with Kim Jong Un.

在那些花大量时间讨论朝鲜威胁的人士看来，唐纳德?特朗普(Donald Trump)或许应该尝试与直接面对平壤那位独裁者“火线狙击”的国家更密切地合作。但在为期11天的亚洲之行期间，特朗普在韩国停留的时间将比他到访的其他所有国家都短，而事实上，韩国是美国的坚定盟友，且在未来与金正恩(Kim Jong Un)的任何对抗中都将首当其冲。

The recently elected government in Seoul has rolled out the red carpet and attempted to charm Mr Trump, despite his insulting remarks about President Moon Jae-in, whom he called an appeaser of North Korea in a tweet.

虽然特朗普对韩国总统文在寅(Moon Jae-in)发表了侮辱性的言论，在Twitter上称文在寅为对朝绥靖主义者，但新近选出的韩国政府还是铺开了红毯热烈欢迎特朗普。

Before this visit, Mr Trump also threatened to tear up a free-trade agreement with Korea and suggested South Korea should pay more for the defence umbrella provided by the US.

特朗普在此行之前还威胁要撕毁与韩国的自由贸易协定，并暗示韩国应该为美国提供的防卫伞支出更多。

This kind of zero-sum transactional thinking displays complete ignorance of how US power works. Mr Trump brings the tactics of a grubby New York real estate deal to the realm of high diplomacy. In the process he does enormous damage to the reputation of western liberal democracy around the world.

这种零和交易思维方式暴露了特朗普对美国权力如何发挥作用一无所知。特朗普把肮脏纽约地产交易的策略用到高等级外交领域。在这个过程中，他在全世界对西方自由民主制度的声誉造成了巨大破坏。

South Korea, on the other hand, is a shining example of liberal democracy at a time when authoritarianism is on the rise everywhere, especially across Asia.

另一方面，在威权主义遍地崛起（尤其是在亚洲各地）之际，韩国是自由民主制度的一个光辉榜样。

Instead of courting junior aspiring despots like Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte, Mr Trump should laud the achievements of a nation that has transformed itself from military dictatorship into a thriving and robust democracy in just three decades.

特朗普不应迎合菲律宾总统罗德里戈?杜特尔特(Rodrigo Duterte)之类野心勃勃的新晋独裁者，而应大赞一个仅用30年时间便从军事独裁转型为繁荣稳健民主制度的国家取得的成就。

Over a slightly longer period, South Korea also changed from a semi-feudal society, devastated by war and decades of Japanese occupation, into a technological powerhouse, home to some of the world’s most profitable companies.

从稍微长一点的时间跨度上看，韩国还从一个被战争和日本几十年占领毁掉的半封建社会转变成了一个技术强国，成为多家全球最赚钱企业的诞生地。

We have a convenient way to understand the scale of South Korea’s accomplishments and why it is such a beacon of hope for liberal capitalist democracy. As recently as the early 1970s, North Korea was actually richer than its more populous neighbour to the south, twice as rich as China and three times richer than India. Today, South Korea’s gross domestic product is nearly 40 times larger than North Korea’s.

有一个很便利的方式来理解韩国取得的伟大成就，以及为什么它称得上自由资本主义民主的希望灯塔。上世纪70年代初，朝鲜实际上比人口更多的韩国更富裕，比中国富一倍，比印度富两倍。但如今，韩国的国内生产总值(GDP)几乎是朝鲜的40倍。

With the same language and culture and the same starting point, it would be hard to design a more perfect controlled experiment to compare the effects on society of capitalist democracy versus communist totalitarianism. When the Korean peninsula was divided in the early 1950s following the Korean war, most of the country’s natural resources and heavy industry were located north of the dividing line at the 38th parallel. For most of the next decade, North Korea’s industrial production grew twice as fast as that in the south. South Korea caught up in the 1970s but its real outperformance has come since the end of military rule and the introduction of democracy in the 1980s.

同样的语言和文化、同样的起点，很难设计出一个更完美的对照实验来对实行资本主义民主和实行共产极权主义的社会结果进行对比。上世纪50年代初，当朝鲜半岛因朝鲜战争而分裂时，半岛上的大多数自然资源和重工业都位于北纬38度附近的军事分界线以北。在随后10年的大部分时间，朝鲜的工业生产增速达到了韩国的两倍。韩国在上世纪70年代赶了上来，但自80年代军事统治结束并引入民主制度之后，韩国真正的优胜实力才开始显现。

That is not to say the country is perfect. Suicide rates, youth unemployment and household debt are all worryingly high for such a rich nation. Half of the country’s elderly live in a state of relative poverty. But these are trifling concerns compared with the horrors of Mr Kim’s Stalinist monarchy to the north.

这并不是说韩国完美无缺。对于这样一个富裕国家，自杀率、青年失业率以及家庭债务都高得令人担忧。该国半数老年人生活在相对贫困状态。但与金正恩的斯大林式独裁恐怖统治相比，这些担忧显得微不足道。

Perhaps the biggest challenge lurking in South Korea’s future will be how to integrate the peninsula when the regime in Pyongyang eventually collapses. Incomes in West Germany were only two or three times higher than those in the east when the Berlin Wall came down but the country still struggles with the legacy of reunification. A nearly 40-fold income gap between North and South Korea, combined with 70 years of brainwashing in the north, will make assimilation immeasurably harder.

或许，韩国未来潜藏的最大挑战是在平壤政权最终崩溃时如何实现朝鲜半岛的一体化。柏林墙倒塌之时，西德的收入只是东德的两到三倍，而整个德国仍在应对统一遗留下的问题。朝鲜与韩国之间接近40倍的收入差距——加之朝鲜70年来对民众的不断洗脑——将使实现南北同化难上加难。

Critics of South Korea point to the impeachment of former President Park Geun-hye and her ongoing corruption trial, or the jailing of Samsung scion Lee Jae-yong as signs of chaos and rot. But these events are more appropriately viewed as symbols of the country’s resilience.

批评韩国的人士将前总统朴槿惠(Park Geun-hye)遭弹劾及正在对其进行的腐败审判，或者三星(Samsung)接班人李在镕(Lee Jae-yong)入狱，视为混乱和腐败的表现。但这些事件更应该被视为韩国民主制度韧性的象征。

Very few countries in Asia or indeed much of the rest of the world have strong institutions in place to remove corrupt leaders or subject wealthy oligarchs to an independent, transparent and fair legal process.

很少有亚洲（或者世界其他大部分地区的）国家拥有强有力的制度来拿下腐败的领导人，或者让富豪寡头接受独立、透明和公正的司法审判。

Korea has always seen itself as a “shrimp caught between the whales” of China, Japan, Russia and more recently the US. In the absence of ironclad support from the US there are already signs that Seoul could move closer to rising authoritarian China.

韩国一直把自身视为“夹在鲸鱼之间的虾米”，这些“鲸鱼”包括中国、日本、俄罗斯以及近期的美国。在缺乏来自美国的坚定支持的情况下，已有迹象表明，首尔方面可能会进一步向崛起的威权主义中国靠拢。

Unfortunately, far from supporting the embodiment of American values in South Korea, Mr Trump appears intent on undermining the institutions of democracy at home instead.

遗憾的是，特朗普非但没有对美国价值观在韩国落地生根表示支持，似乎还打算破坏本国国内的民主制度。