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

A chicken market in Seoul in the early 20th century / Robert Neff Collection

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: In addition to one being from Seoul while the other is from the country, one is an adult while the other is a child. Although you’d expect the adult from the big city to be the more worldly and capable of the two, the child from the country effortlessly manipulates and outwits him.

The joke’s use of internal perspective illustrates this in an interesting way — although the reader is given a clear understanding of what the man is thinking and feeling (just as the child is able to effortlessly see through him), the child’s perspective remains a mystery.

A Visitor from Seoul Was Totally Fooled by a Child from the Country

A man from Seoul paid a visit to the countryside for the harvest, and his hosts caught and roasted a chicken to serve him. While he was eating, the owner of the home went inside and only a young child was left sitting beside him.

While watching the man eat, the child said, “Oh, you’re eating the meat from the dead chicken?”

When the man heard that he thought, “Maybe one of their chickens died, so they served it to me.” He stopped eating and put the chicken down, and the child grabbed it and hungrily gobbled it up.

The man asked, “Why are you eating meat from a dead chicken?”

The child replied, “In your house, do you eat them live, then?”

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.