[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

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