식객민우

Origin

‘Sikgaek Minu’ comes from Gong Min-u, a character played by the actor Won Gi-jun in the SBS drama Sikgaek (Gourmet). It simply welds the title of the drama to the character’s name, and means nothing beyond that.

It started on DCInside’s comedy programme gallery. When the drama’s broadcast was confirmed and the cast and schedule announced, a regular poster there under the handle Rockabilly put up a photo of Gong Min-u with nothing in the body of the post but a string of laughter.

There is, in other words, no funny line and no incident behind this meme. Posts supplying laughter without supplying a reason for it kept appearing, and laughing along without asking why became the rule.

Spread

From that gallery it spread across DCInside and then into other humour communities. The settled form is this: when a Sikgaek Minu image or post appears, you laugh, and you do not ask why. That was understood as the unwritten rule.

Why this particular character was chosen has no settled explanation. One reading holds that Min-u’s behaviour in the drama is too half-hearted and pathetic for a villain, giving the laughter a derisive edge, but even that is not established. That trying to find a meaning is itself pointless is what best characterises the meme.

Usage

• A comment consisting of nothing but the name, with no context
• Posts pairing a photo of the character with laughter alone
• Cited as the standard example of a joke repeated for no reason

It only works among people who already know it; for anyone else nothing happens at all. That, too, is part of what people find funny about it.

Sources

• Namuwiki, ‘Sikgaek Minu’ — the origin in Gong Min-u (played by Won Gi-jun) in SBS’s Sikgaek; the first post by the DCInside regular Rockabilly; the unwritten rule of laughing without a reason; the reading that Min-u’s half-hearted villainy underlies the derision
• Namuwiki, ‘Gong Min-u’ — the character in the drama
• TheWiki, ‘Sikgaek Minu’ — a summary of how the phrase is used