Why so serious?
Producers of Gag Concert, a popular sketch-comedy on KBS television, received a warning from the country’s censorship authorities after Chung Tae-ho, right, one of its most popular performers, commented on the show that President-elect Park Geun-hye should stay out of “comedy.” / Korea Times file
Comedians receive warning for lampooning President-elect
By Kim Tong-hyung
Park Geun-hye
Koreans could use some humor. That is at least what some might say about the nation that leads the world in suicide rates.
Interestingly, they couldn’t be pickier about the kind of jokes they want to hear. Performers of the popular KBS sketch-comedy show “Gag Concert” learned in recent weeks that the boundary between what’s considered funny and out of bounds could disappear quickly here. They also probably noted that fat people and women are fair game but not politicians and religious figures.
The producers of the show recently received a warning from censorship authorities after Chung Tae-ho, one of the more popular performers, had this to say to President-elect Park Geun-hye: “I hope you deliver on your many promises, but never ever do comedy. That’s our job. Don’t get funny.”
Now his colleague Hwang Hyeon-hee is under fire for questioning on Sunday’s show whether Buddhist monks “really bow 108 times during their 108 bows” and whether Christian ministers “really pray at dawn every morning.”
Neither Chung nor Hwang’s comments came off as particularly smart or witty on screen and look much worse in print. But lame as they were, the sarcasm-detectors of viewers and government officials were bleeping loudly.
Critics say the real joke is the Korea Communications Standards Commission (KCSC), which was sent scurrying to Park’s defense and slapped “Gag Concert” with a warning.
This was the same panel that decided it was okay for the Korean version of “Saturday Night Live” to portray incumbent President Lee Myung-bak as one of the Teletubbies. But then again, who cares about a president who has turned into something between a lame duck and a fried one?
“It’s inappropriate when one speaks sarcastically in a top-down way to a President-elect who hasn’t’ even started to govern yet,” said a KCSC spokesman. Perhaps Chung could have delivered his lines in formal speech.
While it’s fair to accuse the government agency of being uptight, the slew of harsh comments on KBS’ message board shows that many viewers were also offended by Chung and Hwang’s comments. Oddly, the show rarely gets attacked for its heavy use of fat jokes and sketches mocking women with bad hair and teeth.
It could be said that the social function of comedy is creating and breaking tension, allowing political and cultural minorities to confront the mainstream and get away with it. And it sometimes seems that this function is non-existent in Korea, a land where sarcasm comes to die.
“I think this is not so much about the lack of humor but an inverted and distorted idea about what’s funny,” said Choi Yu-jin, a thespian who frequently does comedy in Daehangno, Seoul.
“Think about after-hour office get-togethers (“hoesik”). Make one joke about the boss who sits over there and you will be throwing cold water on the atmosphere. Make a sexually inappropriate joke about the new girl who was just hired and everybody laughs. And if she can’t take it, she will be told not to be so serious.”