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