Lampooning the pols

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.