[LAUGHING THROUGH HISTORY 27] 'The Rice Cake Is Mine!'

“The most common situation in the humor collection “Kkalkkal Useum” is conflict between husbands and wives. The joke I’m translating today also features a husband and wife, but it stands out in some interesting ways. The first is that the stakes of the conflict are so much lower. Many of the other jokes feature conflict around significant life events like child-rearing, or a wife opposing her husband’s decision to take a concubine. In this joke, on the other hand, the only thing at stake is a silly wager about who gets to enjoy eating some rice cake. Another difference is that in almost all the other jokes, the wife wins the conflict. In a more typical joke from the collection, the husband starts out with more social power and authority, but the wife uses quick thinking and wit to turn the tables and flip the hierarchy upside down. The situation in this joke is different because in the wager between the husband and wife, the husband wins. And yet, from a wider perspective, he’s a loser. The couple has been so myopically focused on their marital rivalry that they haven’t even

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