Actor Lee Joon-ki became the nation's heartthrob when he played an effeminate court jester in the country's most viewed film of all time, "The King and the Clown".

当演员李准基在韩国最多人次观看的电影<王的男人>中﹐饰演一个拥有女人气质的宫廷弄臣时，他成为了全国的心跳。

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Mr Carpenter said characters such as Pennywise, the murderous clown in Stephen King's novel It, and the evil criminal mastermind the Joker in Batman, had contributed to the view of clowns as "scary".

BBC: Scary clown mask

The movement started around the time of the 1992 riots that followed the Rodney King verdict, when a previously wayward young man named Thomas Johnson reinvented himself as Tommy the Clown and established an institution called Tommy's Hip Hop Clown Academy.

WSJ: Bothered and Bewildered

YouTube users around the world responded by posting a series of Bhumibol-bashing clips, portraying the king as a clown, as various types of animals and as a pedophile.

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