Namdaemun

The cirriculum for my students classes are often funny. We follow the lives of fictitional characters through books and videos. The videos are pretty cheesy and the students are only into them if something funny happens to a character (like his pants ripping). Today my students started laughing at an unusual spot in the video. Jinho (one of the main characters), was at the top of N'Seoul tower. A foreigner woman asked him where Namdaemun was, so she could look at it with the towers telescope. Each class when she said Namdaemun the students would giggle. I wondered if she was not pronouncing the word right since sometimes students laugh at me when I mispronounce a Korean word, but then I thought, "this is a nationwide cirriculum, it should not have pronunciation mistakes". I asked my coteacher during the video in one of my classes why the students were laughing. She whispered to me, "Namdaemun means men's jipper". When I realized what she said I started cracking up. I know enough Korean to know that Namdaemun means "South Gate". So they use "south gate" as a slang term for a man's open zipper.

Right after the video stopped I was still laughing. The students wanted to know why I was laughing and she told them. Now, we are all laughing and I have to have them repeat the following dialogue.

Woman: Where is Namdaemun?
Jinho: It's down there.
Woman: Wow, It's so Beautiful.
Woman's Husband: Wonderful!

It was totally inapropriate and completely hillarious.

Namdaemun

Zipper