The joke I’m translating today is short and simple, but it’s interesting for the way it uses humor to parody and attack Western racism and arrogance. Although the joke was included in a Korean humor collection, the two figures here are identified only as a Westerner and a man from China’s Qing Dynasty. (Qing was the last Chinese dynasty and ended in 1911, five years before “Kkalkkal Useum” was published.) Since the joke features a Chinese rather than a Korean protagonist, it’s a reasonable guess that the editor took this joke from an earlier Chinese source. This choice of protagonists makes this joke stand out from most Korean humor of the era, which more often deals with family relationships. This joke opens with the Westerner making fun of the Chinese man using an established racist trope: that Europeans are cleaner and more hygienic than other races, an idea which was intended to provide a pseudoscientific justification for their racial supremacy. This was part of a broader racist ideology that justified Western efforts toward colonialism and economic exploitation in East
