LAUGHING THROUGH HISTORY 29 'She Saw the Mt. Nam Signal Beacon and Shouted Fire!'
People light signal fires at Bongsudae Pavilion on central Seoul's Mount Nam, Aug. 1, 1995, during a ceremony for the reconstruction of the site. Korea Times file
Editor’s note
“Laughing through History” is a column that explores the roots of Korean humor through the joke book “Kkalkkal Useum,” originally published in 1916.
Today I’m translating a joke about a conflict between a mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. This is a relationship that has been depicted as contentious in Korean media from premodern writing to TV dramas today. The mother-in-law here demands obedience and silence from her daughter-in-law, but isn’t very clear in her instructions.
This joke could be read as mocking the daughter-in-law for lacking the common sense (or social sense) to know what’s expected of her. But there’s also room for seeing it as a mockery of the mother-in-law. By following her instructions to the letter, with absurd results, the daughter-in-law undermines the mother-in-law’s authority. The joke itself gives no insight into what the daughter-in-law is thinking in this situation, which forces the reader to speculate about how intentional her choices are. There’s room to wonder whether she’s using some degree of malicious compliance against an overbearing authority figure who she isn’t able to oppose directly. Underneath the absurd punchline, this joke hints at unspoken tensions within Korean society at the time.
The joke mentions a signal fire on Mount Nam. This was part of a system used for long-distance communication during the 1392-1910 Joseon Dynasty. The system was done away with in 1895 as part of the Gabo Reforms, a late-Joseon modernization effort. Since “Kkalkkal Useum” was published in 1916, this means the world depicted here was over 20 years old. That is, it was as distant in time as the pre-Facebook world is now.
“She Saw the Mount Nam Signal Beacon and Shouted ‘Fire!’”
A certain mother-in-law said to her daughter-in-law, “You just came to this house, so don’t talk lightly about what you hear and see here.”
Some time later, there was a kitchen fire and the daughter-in-law didn’t say a word, so the mother-in-law chided her. “How can you not say anything when there’s a fire?”
But the daughter-in-law replied, “Mother, you instructed me not to say anything lightly, so I didn’t dare speak up.”
The mother-in-law said, “Even if you don’t talk about other things, if you see that there’s a fire, of course you should say something.”
A few days afterward, the daughter-in-law saw the signal fire on Mount Nam and shouted, “Fire! Fire!”