Rak!

Yesterday Erma and I were in one of the local eateries having lunch while I bemoaned my poor performance on our listening comprehension final exam. (I'll find out tomorrow just how poor it was.) The television in the restaurant was tuned to a music video station, and they were showing a live musical performance at a big open-air theater.

On the screen behind the performers on stage, the following text appeared in giant green letters:

SCHOOL OF 樂

The Chinese character is used to write two different meaningful syllables in Korean (and in Chinese). One is ak 악 (Chinese yuè), meaning "music". The other is pronounced nak 낙 or rak 락 (Chinese lè), meaning "joy".

Have you figured out the multilingual pun? If the character is given one of its Korean pronunciations for the meaning "joy", the sign can be read "SCHOOL OF RAK", i.e. "SCHOOL OF ROCK". This, of course, evokes associations with the character's other meaning, "music".