Oh dear, oh dear. Sometimes, I can understand just enough Korean to create hilarity and confusion in my brain.
I was riding the subway, and in a sign above my head, right in front of me, I read “엉덩이에 사과한다.” Now, as best I can figure out, this means “Apologize to your ass.” Really. Here is a picture of an ad (found via naver image search) that roughly resembles the one I saw.
It’s advertising a product called “apple hip”. There’s a lot going on here, perhaps more than anyone should want to know.
First of all, it’s important to realize that the Korean “엉덩이” can mean all kinds of things, from the innocuous “hip” to the dirty-sounding “ass” – the same word is used for all of these things. I’ve had humorous moments in the classroom, when a student, after a short session with their little electronic dictionary, will innocently and confidently use the word “ass” where we would use the word “hips.”
Secondly, there is a common pun involving the word “사과” which means both “apology” and “apple”. So they work in the name of their product and make a joke about how you need this product to improve your butt. It is also drawing on the huge popularity of Apple Corp. products (and note the Applesque design look, below), making an English-language pun on the word “hip,” drawing on the Korean meaning of “butt” and the English meaning of “cool”. Which is to say, you need this product if you want to be “hip,” or cool, butt-wise.
Now, I could get this far, but I still had no idea what the hell the actual “apple hip” product is. Obviously, something to improve your butt, in some way. One of an apparently infinite line of Korean “beauty” products of dubious intent and claim. Some more research… The best I can figure out, it’s some kind of butt massager. Here is another picture I found on naver:
Seriously! I would expect to see this advertised in my email spam box, not on the subway. But hey (butt, hey?), this is Korea. Strange country.
