군침이 싹 도노

Origin

‘Gunchimi ssak dono’ — roughly ‘my mouth is watering’ in a broad dialect ending — is the caption attached to an edit of Loopy, a character from the Korean children’s cartoon Pororo, with her face altered into a sly grin. In the original she is a bashful beaver; changing one expression turned her into someone else entirely.

It began on Twitter, where the phrase was attached to a photo as a joke, and the version with Loopy’s face edited into a leering smile then spread through Facebook and elsewhere. The original edit is attributed to a person going by Jo In-seung, who uploaded it via the image-editing app PicsArt.

Editing Loopy’s face was not new in itself — versions grafting the actor Ma Dong-seok’s face onto her had circulated occasionally — but this meme is what turned Loopy edits into a full-blown trend.

Spread

What grew out of it is ‘Janmang Loopy’. It is a case of a character meme made on the internet being absorbed back into the official product: from 2020 the broadcaster EBS developed a spin-off character line built around Loopy. A supporting character in the original became a brand in her own right because of the meme, going on to appear in collaborations and sticker sets.

Usage

• Reacting to food with visible appetite
• Coveting an object or an opportunity
• As a reaction image for making no attempt to hide what you are thinking

The phrase literally refers to appetite, but in practice it is used more often for things that are not food. The mismatch of a children’s character wearing that expression is where the joke lives.

Sources

• Namuwiki, ‘Loopy (Pororo)’ — the route from Twitter to Facebook; the original creator and the PicsArt upload; the abbreviation; earlier Loopy edits such as the Ma Dong-seok version; the development into Janmang Loopy