This is an idiom from my book of idioms.
머리를 깎다
meo.ri.reul kkakk.da
head-OBJ shave
“to shave one’s head.”
It means to join the Buddhist priesthood – since priests shave their heads. It is used as a kind of “when all else fails…” option, to express despair, maybe: e.g. “Well, when all else fails, I can always go join a monastery.”
This thought has a more than passing appeal for me – I have harbored it many times, long before learning the idiom.
[daily log: walking, 6km]
There’s got to be a close English equivalent saying I can’t think of one.
(“When all else fails” is not a full saying, but the beginning of one. Then again, these Korean idioms are so sparse that they are only fragments of ideas, too, and I’d only rarely guess the meanings without your explanations.)