BWAHAHAHA 9 'He Ate Soybean Pulp but He Said He Ate Pork'

A small Korean restaurant in the early 1900s / Courtesy of Robert Neff Collection

“Bwahahahaha” is a weekly column that explores the roots of Korean humor through the joke book “Kkalkkal Useum,” originally published in 1916.

The joke I’m translating today is quite gross, but I find something endearing in it. The main character wants to look like more of a high-roller and big shot than he is. That may not be the nicest of human motivations, but who can’t relate? He fails completely and becomes a figure of ridicule, but to my mind the fact that his flaws are relatable keeps the ridicule aimed toward him from seeming too mean-spirited. It reminds me of the boss from the TV show “The Office” — someone else desperate to look big.

Although most of the jokes in “Kkalkkal Useum” stage a conflict between two characters of unequal status, this one is unusual in that it shows two friends of equal status — the conflict is between what the man really is and what he pretends to be.

The various foods and drinks mentioned represent a contrast between cheap and expensive. Soybean pulp (or “biji” in Korean) is a byproduct of tofu production and would have been one of the cheapest possible protein sources. (“Twenty pun” here indicates a small sum of money.) On the other hand, the joke's setting is a world without modern livestock production, in which pork would have been relatively much more expensive than it is today; meat was thus more of a luxury. Today a drink called “moju” is often richly flavored with cinnamon and other spices, but here I think the emphasis is on the fact that it’s an unfiltered, cheaper rice wine, while “yakju” is a more expensive and finer clear rice wine.

He Ate Soybean Pulp but He Said He Ate Pork

A man paid 20 pun for a cheap cup of moju and enough soybean pulp to stuff himself. After his meal the man let out a long belch.

His friend asked, "Did you have a big meal?" and the man answered, "I just had two cups of fine yakju and a bunch of pork."

Then he let out another big belch and a clump of soybean pulp flew out of his mouth.

His friend said, "Is that pork, then?"

The man was flustered, and he replied, "The pork I was eating was fed on soybean pulp."

G.S. Hand is a graduate of the Translation Academy at LTI Korea, winner of the Fiction Grand Prize of the 53rd Modern Korean Literature Translation Awards and has a master’s degree in Modern Korean Literature from Korea University. He lives in Seoul.