POKING fun at the Kim family dynasty of North Korea has long been a staple for satirists (those outside the gulag nation, that is): think of the depiction of the late Kim Jong Il in the comedy “Team America”, or just Google a website devoted to his son, “kim jong-un looking at things”. Yet now South Korea, south of the demilitarised zone, is the new venue for an unlikely boom in satire.
Though democratic for quarter of a century, South Korea’s Confucian culture is top-down and deferential. Public criticism of the powerful, especially sarcasm, has abiding power to shock. Excessively strict defamation laws do not help—you can be found guilty even if you prove your criticism to be true.
Yet one plucky rebel is changing everything through his podcasts. Kim Ou-joon founded “Naneun Ggomsuda” (very roughly: “I’m a sneaky trickster”) last April, with the express purpose of making fun of gakha (“His Highness”), the conservative president, Lee Myung-bak. Mr Kim claims to have 10m listeners—if true, it is among the world’s most popular podcasts.
“Naggomsu”, the podcast’s abbreviation, offers a mix of raucous humour and investigative muckraking. Mr Kim likens the combination to “sugaring the pill”. The pill can be powerful: the podcast broke the story of how the office of one parliamentarian, then a member of ruling Grand National Party (GNP), allegedly ordered a hacking attack on the website of the National Election Commission in order to influence the outcome of the Seoul mayoral election in October. The scandal may greatly damage the GNP’s prospects in National Assembly elections in April.
Mr Kim believes that Naggomsu became an “underground” success thanks to the lack of “overground” media freedom. America’s Freedom House describes the South Korean press as only “partly free”, citing “an increase in official censorship” and “government attempts to influence news and information content”. With television and print journalists unable to hold those in power properly to account, there is a demand for alternatives.
Now, though, the influence of “Naggomsu” and its kind is spreading to mainstream humour. They made television comedy start to look boring and stale, says a female fan in her 20s. A Korean version of “Saturday Night Live”, an American current-affairs comedy programme, began in December. “Gag Concert”, a long-running sketch show known for slapstick and safe topics has started to get laughs out of political themes.
In November a former GNP member, Kang Yong-seok, sued one “Gag Concert” comedian for “disrespecting the National Assembly”. This was in response to remarks that those wanting to become politicians should grease the necessary palms, and then “make just one visit to a traditional market, shake hands with a grandma and eat a bowl of soup there, even though you normally don’t.” Rather than running scared, the show’s writers came back with an entire episode lampooning Mr Kang’s lawsuit.
The assemblyman backed down, but one of Kim Ou-joon’s comrades has not been so lucky with the law. Last month a frequent “Naggomsu” host, Jeong Bong-ju, was given a 12-month prison sentence for spreading false information about President Lee, alleging past involvement in a fraud scheme.
In a sign of changing times, “Naggomsu” itself is now the target of satire. A television station, MBC, produced a send-up of the podcast, calling it “Naneun Hasuda” (“I am sewage”). “We parody the mainstream, and now the mainstream parodies us”, says Mr Kim matter-of-factly. He will not sue, he says, but keep his focus strictly on His Highness.