The Korea Times

LAUGHING THROUGH HISTORY 30 'Do You Wash Your Face in the Nude?'

The joke I’m translating today is short and simple, but it’s interesting for the way it uses humor to parody and attack Western racism and arrogance. Although the joke was included in a Korean humor collection, the two figures here are identified only as a Westerner and a man from China's Qing Dynasty. (Qing was the last Chinese dynasty and ended in 1911, five years before “Kkalkkal Useum” was published.) Since the joke features a Chinese rather than a Korean protagonist, it’s a reasonable guess that the editor took this joke from an earlier Chinese source. This choice of protagonists makes this joke stand out from most Korean humor of the era, which more often deals with family relationships. This joke opens with the Westerner making fun of the Chinese man using an established racist trope: that Europeans are cleaner and more hygienic than other races, an idea which was intended to provide a pseudoscientific justification for their racial supremacy. This was part of a broader racist ideology that justified Western efforts toward colonialism and economic exploitation in East

Aug 14, 2026By G.S. Hand

Laughing through History

LAUGHING THROUGH HISTORY 29 'She Saw the Mt. Nam Signal Beacon and Shouted Fire!'

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

Jul 18, 2026By G.S. Hand

Laughing through History

LAUGHING THROUGH HISTORY 28 'At Least He Got Over His Malaria'

Today I’m translating a joke that targets a shortsighted man for his foolishness. In that way it’s similar to the last installment of this series, which translated a joke called “The Rice Cake Is Mine!” In this one, a father is so eager to treat his son’s illness that he doesn’t realize that the treatment is worse than the disease. Both these jokes fit with a superiority theory of humor. According to this view, the joke is funny because we can see how foolish the characters are being, and since we have a better understanding of the situation, we can laugh because we feel superior to them. The joke I’m looking at today is different from the previous one, though, because this one is also about Koreans at the turn of the 20th century learning to navigate the modern world — in this case, modern medicine. The disease in question is malaria. Experts say the history of malaria can be difficult to trace because before modern germ theory was developed, words associated with malaria were used for a variety of fever-causing conditions not necessarily caused by the malaria parasit

Jul 6, 2026By Graham Hand

Laughing through History

LAUGHING THROUGH HISTORY 27 'The Rice Cake Is Mine!'

The most common situation in the humor collection “Kkalkkal Useum” is conflict between husbands and wives. The joke I’m translating today also features a husband and wife, but it stands out in some interesting ways. The first is that the stakes of the conflict are so much lower. Many of the other jokes feature conflict around significant life events like child-rearing, or a wife opposing her husband’s decision to take a concubine. In this joke, on the other hand, the only thing at stake is a silly wager about who gets to enjoy eating some rice cake. Another difference is that in almost all the other jokes, the wife wins the conflict. In a more typical joke from the collection, the husband starts out with more social power and authority, but the wife uses quick thinking and wit to turn the tables and flip the hierarchy upside down. The situation in this joke is different because in the wager between the husband and wife, the husband wins. And yet, from a wider perspective, he’s a loser. The couple has been so myopically focused on their marital rivalry that they haven’t even

May 29, 2026By G.S. Hand

Laughing through History

LAUGHING THROUGH HISTORY 26 'Can You Trust an Idle Dream?'

A rich man dies, leaving behind two sons who wind up fighting over their shares of the inheritance. Because this situation is rooted in such basic family relationships, it has an archetypal quality. There are any number of examples of stories about this kind of brotherly conflict, but within Korean literature the obvious comparison is the Joseon-era story of Heungbu and Nolbu, which centers on a kind-hearted but poor younger brother who is rewarded for his goodness and a rich but wicked-hearted older brother who is punished for his cruelty. The joke I’m translating today is based on a conflict like this, but it’s played for laughs as each brother tries to claim that their dead father has come to him in a dream with instructions for dividing the family wealth. In order to understand their dispute, you have to understand the units of land they’re discussing. After the father dies, the older brother wants to give the younger one 10 "majigi" of fields as his inheritance. A majigi was a unit of land, but it wasn’t a consistent size: it meant enough land to plant one mal (about 18 li

May 16, 2026By G.S. Hand

Laughing through History

LAUGHING THROUGH HISTORY 25 'A Visitor from Seoul Was Totally Fooled by a Child from the Country'

One recurring theme of 20th-century Korean literature is the conflict between the country and the city, usually meaning Seoul. When “Kkalkkal Useum” was published in 1916, Korea’s population was overwhelmingly rural. The urban population of Korea during the 1392-1910 Joseon Dynasty has been estimated at 3 to 5 percent of the total. Major waves of urbanization happened during the industrialization and economic chaos of the 1910-45 colonial period, and even more during the economic development of the 1960s and 1970s. Although this joke comes from a time when the population of Seoul accounted for only a small proportion of the total Korean population, Seoul was still firmly established as the center of government power, education and the new publishing industry. This power imbalance between Seoul and the country leads to a social tension which is the basis of this joke. Like most of the jokes from “Kkalkkal Useum,” it works by presenting a pair of figures with unequal social power, then flipping their hierarchical status upside down. The figures shown here are unequal in two ways

Mar 22, 2026By G.S. Hand

Laughing through History

LAUGHING THROUGH HISTORY 24 'A Truly Dumbfounding Fate'

Traditional Korean society valued boys over girls, in part because a male heir was considered necessary to continue the family line. But because parents couldn’t choose a baby’s sex, this became a significant point of anxiety when a baby was born. (It’s worth pointing out that this preference has decreased in contemporary Korean society.) And since one role of humor is to express social tensions, this lead to the appearance of a particular humor figure — the man with many daughters but no sons. The two jokes below feature such characters. These jokes depend on the social background knowledge that having daughters but no sons is considered a terrible misfortune. In other words, the humor is sexist by definition. The goal of translating them isn’t to make readers laugh (they probably won’t), but to provide a window to the era they come from, and possibly to provide insight into how humor from our own era works. The second joke here mentions a theater called Gwangmudae, which existed from 1898 to 1930 and would have been in operation when this book was published. It was one of

Feb 15, 2026By G.S. Hand

Laughing through History

LAUGHING THROUGH HISTORY 23 'The Mourner Who Lost His Hat and Ended Up in the Jahye Hospital'

The joke I’m translating today is absolutely disgusting, and if you don’t like scatological humor you’ll probably be happier not reading it. It’s a common observation that Korea tends to be more comfortable with poop jokes than humor in English, while being less comfortable with other taboos like sexuality. Be that as it may, this example of scatological humor is unusually stomach-turning. Consider yourself warned that it’s super gross. The joke benefits from a bit of background information. During the late Joseon era in Korea (which ended in 1910), when a man lost his parents he was expected to observe three years of mourning, which included wearing particular clothes that avoided fine materials or decoration. This man is described as wearing a bang-gat, a hat made of woven straw which was part of this mourning attire. Jahye, or charity, Hospitals were a network of medical facilities established in cities throughout the Korean Peninsula beginning in 1909 to provide care especially for the poor who couldn’t afford medical treatment elsewhere. The best-known of these facilit

Feb 1, 2026By G.S. Hand

Laughing through History

LAUGHING THROUGH HISTORY 22 ‘There’s No Dot in the Middle, So That Character Is 'Dae,' Not 'Tae'!’

The joke I’m translating today mixes a literary sensibility with an earthy and crude sense of humor. The setup is that three women are expected to celebrate their father-in-law’s upcoming birthday by miming the shapes of Chinese characters (also called sinographs, or “hanja” in Korean) with their bodies. Chinese characters were introduced to Korea by at least the second century B.C.E. and established as the writing system used for government, law and education during the Three Kingdoms Period (which lasted from the first century B.C.E. through the seventh century C.E.). Although the Korean writing system, Hangul, was developed and promulgated during the 15th century, it was limited in application and Chinese characters retained wider use and greater cultural cache until the 20th century. In this scene, each of the daughters-in-law has to choose a Chinese character to mime. The first makes the shape of the character “ho” (好), meaning “good” (an ideograph of a woman and child). The second makes the shape of the character “an” (安), meaning “peace,” by wearing a

Dec 26, 2025By G.S. Hand

Laughing through History

LAUGHING THROUGH HISTORY 21 'I’d Rather Have Two 25-Year-Old Husbands'

Today I’m translating two short jokes that both depict marriages with an age gap. Conflicts between husbands and wives are the most frequent subject for jokes in “Kkalkkal Useum.” The 1910s, when this book was published, was a period when Korean intellectuals were actively discussing questions about what marriage should be. Although in Joseon-era Korea it was common for people to marry in their early teens, the writer Yi Gwangsu in particular drew attention for condemning “early marriage” as harmful and immoral. There was also debate about whether marriage should be arranged by families or be a free choice between individuals. The first of these two jokes shows a difference of opinion between a man and his daughter as to what she should be looking for in a husband. The humor genre makes it possible for her to express her own agency and desires, rejecting his values without facing criticism or negative consequences. The second joke depicts a marriage between a very young groom and a girl several years older. Although social convention placed a husband in a position of authorit

Nov 11, 2025By G.S. Hand

Laughing through History

LAUGHING THROUGH HISTORY 30 'Do You Wash Your Face in the Nude?'

LAUGHING THROUGH HISTORY 29 'She Saw the Mt. Nam Signal Beacon and Shouted Fire!'

LAUGHING THROUGH HISTORY 28 'At Least He Got Over His Malaria'

LAUGHING THROUGH HISTORY 27 'The Rice Cake Is Mine!'

LAUGHING THROUGH HISTORY 26 'Can You Trust an Idle Dream?'

LAUGHING THROUGH HISTORY 25 'A Visitor from Seoul Was Totally Fooled by a Child from the Country'

LAUGHING THROUGH HISTORY 24 'A Truly Dumbfounding Fate'

LAUGHING THROUGH HISTORY 23 'The Mourner Who Lost His Hat and Ended Up in the Jahye Hospital'

LAUGHING THROUGH HISTORY 22 ‘There’s No Dot in the Middle, So That Character Is 'Dae,' Not 'Tae'!’

LAUGHING THROUGH HISTORY 21 'I’d Rather Have Two 25-Year-Old Husbands'

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