The joke I’m translating today mixes a literary sensibility with an earthy and crude sense of humor. The setup is that three women are expected to celebrate their father-in-law’s upcoming birthday by miming the shapes of Chinese characters (also called sinographs, or “hanja” in Korean) with their bodies. Chinese characters were introduced to Korea by at least the second century B.C.E. and established as the writing system used for government, law and education during the Three Kingdoms Period (which lasted from the first century B.C.E. through the seventh century C.E.). Although the Korean writing system, Hangul, was developed and promulgated during the 15th century, it was limited in application and Chinese characters retained wider use and greater cultural cache until the 20th century. In this scene, each of the daughters-in-law has to choose a Chinese character to mime. The first makes the shape of the character “ho” (好), meaning “good” (an ideograph of a woman and child). The second makes the shape of the character “an” (安), meaning “peace,” by wearing a