In the Cho Sun dynasty, a local clown, Jang-seng, runs away to Seoul with Gong-gil, his lover-like friend who used to be the nobles` plaything. Jang-seng and Gong-gil, while performing a satirical play of a king with his new clown team in Seoul are fortuitously appointed the royal clown team. Jang-seng and his friends, however, fall in the mire between the unstable king and the senior statesman`s enmity for power. When the king is sexually attracted to Gong-gil, things gets more and more complicated. There are four men in this film, a king, a clown, and their helpers. Their relationships are intricately involved with the confrontation between power and the arts, and conflicts between lovers. Director Jun-ik LEE effectively describes the oppressed desire and anger by the performance not by any direct expression of their feelings. [King and the Clown] finally fascinates the audience with a tragic romance. It also obtained the highest box-office record in the first half of this year with its vitality of Korean performance art, pathetic romance and implied homosexuality. (Huh Moon-yung)