Interest in April Fool’s Day is not what it used to be. This is because life is not easy enough to make jokes. April Fool’s Day is a day when people are not severely criticized for deceiving others with plausible lies. Of course, everyone should be able to laugh it off lightly. It is said that April Fool’s Day originated when French people jokingly exchanged New Year’s gifts after changing to the Gregorian calendar in 1564.
Among the episodes related to April Fools’ Day, a famous report was made on Dutch TV in 1950 that the Leaning Tower of Pisa collapsed. Of course, many people were shocked by this April Fool’s Day report. In 1957, the BBC broadcast a scene of spaghetti being harvested from a tree in Switzerland. It is said that quite a few people who saw this actually asked the broadcasting station how to grow spaghetti trees. The BBC is famous for pulling out clever April Fools’ Day pranks almost every year.
There is also an April Fool’s Day episode in the United States. In 1996, a company called Taco Bell published an advertisement in the New York Times announcing that it had purchased the Liberty Bell and renamed it ‘Taco Liberty Bell.’ The White House was flooded with questions to confirm whether this advertisement was true. In response, a White House spokesperson reportedly responded, “The Lincoln Memorial will also be sold and converted into the Ford Lincoln Mercury Memorial.” This is an example of entertaining people with an April Fool’s Day answer to an April Fool’s Day lie.
In Korea, there was an apology due to April Fool’s Day coverage. In 2001, Japan’s Tokyo Shimbun reported in an April Fool’s Day article that “China and Japan are collecting DNA from Chairman Mao Zedong’s body preserved in Beijing to create clones,” but a domestic newspaper mistook this for fact and reported it. The newspaper eventually apologized for the report.
It was April Fool’s Day morning. Each political party and candidate is doing their best to win votes. However, the public’s reaction is lukewarm. Voters seem to assume that exaggerated promises will be rampant during elections. In particular, in this election, there is a lot of ‘absent language’ being used to criticize the other party. April Fool’s Day is not just one day a year; it is April Fool’s Day, 365 days a year.
Cheon Nam-soo, Director of Gangwon Social Research Institute
