In the non-stop laugh-fest called the BISP1-M 반 class on the elementary side, we were attempting to read a painfully bowdlerized version of the Greek myth of how Zeus came back and killed Kronos. It's surprising the extent to which certain rarefied aspects of Western mythology permeate Korean pop culture – apparently, most of the kids already knew this story. There may be some song or video or "gag show" comic routine involved in their knowledge of this, but a truly bizarre moment came when, as I was explaining the bizarre facts of the Zeus myth, a fifth grader named Kevin burst out in song. I'm not familiar with the song.
I was talking about how strange it is that when Zeus give the poison to his dad, Kronos, the old man proceeds to vomit up his other children, whom he'd eaten earlier in the story. I'm miming the act of vomiting for the kids, since it's not a well-known vocabulary item. And fifth graders being fifth graders, this is profoundly entertaining, in a way few other things can be. So we're having fun. And then, right as I say, "and they're not even babies!" (talking about how the eaten children that Kronos vomits up are now grown-up siblings), a boy named Kevin croons, "Ahhh, Ohh, Casanovaaa!"
Huh wuh? Casanova? How's he fit in this story? One of the girls yells out, "Zeus was a Casanova!"
Well. I guess they know this story already. "Not really a normal Casanova," I try to amend. But it's really too late – they are all dissolving in tears of giggles. And that's how the class ended.
As a kind of nerdly incidental, I would like to point out that it is speculatively believed by many Indo-Europeanists that the Greek name Kronos and the Sanskrit "karma" share a common etymology, a sort of "cutting" or "inscription."