BWAHAHAHAHA 11 'Something Terrible Could Have Happened!'

A stele in Gyeongju, North Gyeongsang Province, is depicted in a postcard from the 1920s. Courtesy of Diane Nars Collection

The joke I’m translating today finds humor in the ridiculous figure of an absent-minded old man. While other jokes from “Kkalkkal Useum” depict an unusual, even far-fetched situation, this one centers on a much more commonplace scenario: a memorial ceremony for a deceased person. The focus, however, is on the character of an old "yangban" — a member of the aristocratic elite from the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910).

Korea has a long tradition of humor mocking the foolishness, greed and incompetence of the yangban class, particularly as a component of oral genres like "pansori" (a musical storytelling genre) and mask dance, rather than in written forms. Increased literacy in late 19th- and early 20th-century Korea enabled the rise of popular humor in writing, but this joke shares at least a similar attitude — if not more — with that older tradition of oral humor.

Note also that the three aristocratic figures depicted here hold government positions. Although “Kkalkkal Useum” was published several years after the colonization of Korea by the Japanese empire, which began in 1910, colonial reality goes unmentioned in the text; instead it depicts a Joseon-era setting. This is a reflection of its adaptation of older material, but it should be kept in mind that attempting to use humor as a tool for direct political criticism would have exposed the book to the possibility of censorship, as the colonial government placed harsh restrictions on publishing during the initial stage of colonization during the 1910s before relaxing them somewhat during the 1920s.

Something Terrible Could Have Happened!

Lord Seo, an old yangban, had a fine mind. He visited his deceased friend Officer Kim’s home to attend a ceremony for the first anniversary of the old man’s death. There he ran into his good friend Sergeant Min, and upon seeing him he said, “Say, where is Officer Kim?”

Sergeant Min replied, “I’m here because Officer Kim passed away and this is the anniversary of his death. But what are you doing in his house if you don’t know where the owner is?”

Lord Seo thought for a moment, then clapped his hands and said, “Oh, my! I forgot.”

A little while later he asked, “Say, what illness did he die from?”

Officer Min replied, “He climbed up high in the mountains to look at the flowers, and he fell to his death.”

Lord Seo said, “Oh, my! Something terrible could have happened!”

Sergeant Min said, “Well, he died. What other terrible thing could have happened? Are your clothes walking around with nothing in them?”

Lord Seo said, “Oh, my! Oh, my! After what I said earlier, now this. Hmph… Where is my mind?”

G.S. Hand is a graduate of the Translation Academy at LTI Korea and 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.