잘나도 내 낭군, 못나도 내 낭군
is-handsome-TOO my dear-husband, is-ugly-TOO my dear-husband
My dear husband is both handsome and ugly.
So, the one place where I found this phrase or proverb translated (interpreted) to English (actually he only interprets the truncated second clause but I suspect it’s familiar enough that the first clause is then understood) seems to think it’s equivalent to Churchill’s “Democracy is the worst form of government except those others that have been tried.” That commenter also suggests “Every human being is defective.”
I think those are very broad interpretations – too much poetic license being taken. But I can’t be sure…
I found another spot where some blogger blogging in Korean seemed to implying a political context for it, too – but my Korean is too lousy to really guess what that’s about. What I did understand is that a substitution is suggested, replacing “내 낭군” [my dear husband] with “우리 대통령” [our president], hence “잘나도 우리 대통령, 못나도 우리 대통령” [Our president is both handsome and ugly] (meant metaphorically maybe – but see picture of former president, at right).
I think maybe a better phrase might be something short and more personal: “I like him/her/it, warts and all.” Just that we accept the good with the bad in any given situation. Since I haven’t been able to find the source context for this line, I’m really just speculating. My intuition is that it doesn’t feel like an “old proverb” so much as a recent phrase that was popularized in some novel or TV show or suchlike.