고자라니

Origin

‘Gojarani’ is a line from the SBS drama Rustic Period (Yain Sidae). The source is episode 64, broadcast on March 4th, 2003.

In the story, Kim Du-han and his men burst into a performance of the socialist propaganda play ‘Nim’, and Shim Yeong — played by Kim Young-in — is shot by Shanghai Jo while trying to escape assassination. When the surgeon Baek In-je tells him in hospital that he has been left impotent, Shim Yeong howls: ‘Impotent — I’m impotent!’ It is meant as a tragic scene, but the sheer scale of the wailing overshoots the situation, and that mismatch is what later became the joke.

Spread

It attracted no particular attention when it aired. The scene became a meme once anonymous internet users started cutting and editing the line, and it is generally dated as entering common currency in 2010 — seven years after broadcast.

The derivative output was unusually large. Edits built on scenes featuring Shim Yeong grew into a genre of their own, known as ‘Shim Yeong-mul’, substantial enough to have its own encyclopaedia entry. Culturally it is also credited with moving the Korean word for impotence out of taboo: previously close to unsayable, it came through this meme to be used lightly for any person, object or situation that fails to perform its function.

Usage

• When something does not work as it should
• An exaggerated howl on being told something you cannot accept
• The variant that swaps the noun into the same ‘X — I’m X!’ frame

It is worth remembering that the underlying word refers to a bodily condition. Applied to an object or a situation it is light; applied to a person it is not.

Sources

• Korean Wikipedia, ‘Gojarani’ — the March 4th, 2003 source scene in episode 64; the in-story sequence of the shooting and the diagnosis; its emergence as a catchphrase in 2010; the shift in the word’s register
• Korean Wikipedia, ‘Shim Yeong-mul’ — the genre of edits derived from the scene
• Korean Wikipedia, ‘Shim Yeong (Rustic Period)’ — the character and the actor Kim Young-in