Forty-six-year-old actor Choi Sung-kook may just be South Korea’s best-known star in China - but not for what you might expect. It isn’t his goofy good looks nor his roles in big-budget rom-coms like Sex is Zero (2002) and Oh! My God (2006) that have earned him fame, but something much more mundane: stickers.
四十六歲的演員崔成國也許是中國最有名的韓國明星了——但不是因你所期待的那樣而有名。他並不是因為他蠢萌的外表或者他在浪漫喜劇巨作《色即是空》和《救世主》裡的角色而出名，而是因為更平凡的東西：表情包。
Stickers, or gifs as they’re known in the West, are used widely as a kind of live-action emoticon among Chinese net users, injecting a bit of levity into online chats or WeChat conversations. Choi first rocketed to sticker stardom around 2007, when a scene from the comedy Mr Kim vs Mr Kim vs Mr Kim (2007) featuring Choi laughing was turned into a gif that spread across the internet like wildfire.
表情包，或者西方人稱的GIF動圖，廣泛地被中國網民用來表達生動的真人情緒，給網上聊天或者微信對話注入了一點樂趣。2007年，因為《金館長對金館長對金館長》(2007)裡的一個場景，崔成國的笑容被製成了動圖，這個動圖在網上像野火一樣蔓延，因此他第一次被塑造成一個表情包明星。
It’s no wonder why it proved so popular; in the gif, Choi - who’s dressed up as a kung fu master, one of the three "Mr Kims" featured in the movie - looks positively cartoonish. In the scene, he’s just defeated a little boy in a video game by secretly kicking away the boy’s stool out from under him, and is now laughing in triumph, his mouth opened wide, revealing two rows of perfectly white teeth, his eyebrows slanted down in smug triumph. He soon became known by his character’s name in the film: Mr Kim.
該表情大受歡迎不無道理：崔成國在這個動圖中打扮成一個看起來相當卡通化的功夫大師——電影裡的三個「金館長」之一。在這個場景裡，他在和一個小男孩打遊戲時通過暗中踢倒了男孩的凳子而贏得了勝利，於是他張開嘴，露出兩排潔白的牙齒，眉毛向下傾斜，自以為是地露出了勝利的笑容。靠著電影裡金館長的角色名，他立即走紅。
The gif quickly spread across South Korea, Japan and China, and soon Choi became a full-fledged meme, as Chinese netizens generated sticker after sticker featuring his face (often on a cartoon panda’s head) with different jokes and captions written below.
這個動圖迅速在韓國，日本和中國流行開來，很快崔成國成為了一個成熟的網絡流行基因，中國網民根據他的臉(通常都加在一個卡通熊貓的腦袋上)加上底部不同的笑話和字幕創造出了許許多多表情圖。
Sticker fame translated into real fame last September, when Choi opened an account on Chinese social media site Sina Weibo, quickly attracting more than 450,000 followers. Recently, his popularity grew even further when his face was deployed as part of a recent "sticker war" that Chinese mainland netizens waged against the Facebook pages of several Taiwanese media organizations for their support of recent statements endorsing Taiwanese independence.
去年九月，表情包人氣真正轉化為了現實人氣。崔成國在中國社交媒體網站新浪微博上開通了帳戶，很快便吸引了超過四百五十萬粉絲。最近，中國內地網民在幾個近期有臺獨言論的臺灣媒體臉譜網頁面下展開的「表情包大戰」中使用了他的表情，崔成國的人氣又大漲了。
The sticker war started around 7 pm on January 20, when members of LiYi, the biggest forum on search engine giant Baidu’s online community Tieba, began attempted to paralyze the Facebook pages of well-known news sites like Set News and Apple Daily by spamming them with stickers - many of them of Choi’s laughing face. Although Choi himself had nothing to do with the sticker war, a number of Chinese netizens ended up commenting on his Sina Weibo, jokingly praising him as "a hero safeguarding China’s integrity."
表情包大戰在1月20號晚上7點左右開始，李毅吧(搜尋引擎巨頭百度旗下在線社區貼吧的最大論壇)成員開始在三立新聞和蘋果日報等新聞網站的臉譜網頁面下刷屏。他們用許多含有崔成國笑臉的表情包霸版。儘管崔成國本人和這場表情包大戰沒有一點關係，大量中國網民都去他的新浪微博底下留言，開玩笑地稱讚他是「保衛中國主權完整的英雄」。
Of course, Choi is more than just a sticker star. A professional actor and comedian, Choi developed an interest in acting from a young age and studying drama at Seoul University of the Arts in the 1990s and launching his career in 1995.
當然，崔成國不僅僅是一個表情包明星。作為一個專業演員和喜劇演員，崔成國在年輕時就對表演有著濃厚興趣，他於1990年在首爾藝術大學學習戲劇表演，並在1995年開啟了自己的職業生涯。
（編輯：何瑩瑩）