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.

　　四十六岁的演员崔成国也许是中国最有名的韩国明星了——但不是因你所期待的那样而有名。他并不是因为他蠢萌的外表或者他在浪漫喜剧巨作《色即是空》和《救世主》里的角色而出名，而是因为更平凡的东西：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，或者西方人称的GIF动图，广泛地被中国网民用来表达生动的真人情绪，给网上聊天或者微信对话注入了一点乐趣。2007年，因为《金馆长对金馆长对金馆长》(2007)里的一个场景，崔成国的笑容被制成了动图，这个动图在网上像野火一样蔓延，因此他第一次被塑造成一个表情包明星。

　　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.

　　该表情大受欢迎不无道理：崔成国在这个动图中打扮成一个看起来相当卡通化的功夫大师——电影里的三个“金馆长”之一。在这个场景里，他在和一个小男孩打游戏时通过暗中踢倒了男孩的凳子而赢得了胜利，于是他张开嘴，露出两排洁白的牙齿，眉毛向下倾斜，自以为是地露出了胜利的笑容。靠着电影里金馆长的角色名，他立即走红。

　　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.

　　这个动图迅速在韩国，日本和中国流行开来，很快崔成国成为了一个成熟的网络流行基因，中国网民根据他的脸(通常都加在一个卡通熊猫的脑袋上)加上底部不同的笑话和字幕创造出了许许多多表情图。

　　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，表情包人气真正转化为了现实人气。崔成国在中国社交媒体网站新浪微博上开通了账户，很快便吸引了超过四百五十万粉丝。最近，中国内地网民在几个近期有台独言论的台湾媒体脸谱网页面下展开的“表情包大战”中使用了他的表情，崔成国的人气又大涨了。

　　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."

　　表情包大战在1月20号晚上7点左右开始，李毅吧(搜索引擎巨头百度旗下在线社区贴吧的最大论坛)成员开始在三立新闻和苹果日报等新闻网站的脸谱网页面下刷屏。他们用许多含有崔成国笑脸的表情包霸版。尽管崔成国本人和这场表情包大战没有一点关系，大量中国网民都去他的新浪微博底下留言，开玩笑地称赞他是“保卫中国主权完整的英雄”。

　　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.

　　当然，崔成国不仅仅是一个表情包明星。作为一个专业演员和喜剧演员，崔成国在年轻时就对表演有着浓厚兴趣，他于1990年在首尔艺术大学学习戏剧表演，并在1995年开启了自己的职业生涯。

（编辑：何莹莹）