Susukkekki

We had a Korean lesson text about riddles, so the teacher told us a lot of Korean riddles. These are riddles of the Dixie-cup type:

Q: "When is a door not a door?"

A: "When it's a jar (ajar)."

Most of them work fine in any language, such as:

Q: "What can you only see with your eyes are closed?"

A: "A dream."

Two of the riddles we learned involve multilingual puns. Of course these were the most interesting to me. Here's the first one:

Q: "세계에서 제일 큰 코는?" "What's the biggest nose (ko) in the world?"

A: "멕시코" "Mexico" (Korean mekshiko, which sounds like "maxi"-ko)

[Updated May 1, 2008 by Lance: I have it on authority from at least one native Korean speaker that "maxi" is not actually part of this pun. Mexico, being a country, is already a big ko. But for me as an English speaker, the pun has an added dimension!]

And the second one:

Q: "풀중에서 제일 좋은 플은?" "What's the best of all the plants (pul)?"

A: "원더풀" "Wondeo-pul" (Korean pronunciation of English "wonderful")

Possibly you had to be there.