Gomaptuusa (Gomap-Toreador Challenge)

Origin

Gomaptuusa (고맙투우사) is a Korean short-form video challenge built on a pun that fuses the Korean word for thanks with the word for bullfighter. The template is generally traced to a sound uploaded to TikTok around 2020 by the Japanese comedy duo COWCOW. The wordplay joins the Japanese thank-you 'arigato' (ありがとう) with 'tougyuushi' (闘牛士, bullfighter), producing a phrase that is usually rendered in Korean media as 'arigatogyushi'. According to reports, the sound began circulating again in Japan several years after its release, and in Korea it spread through short-form videos that were introduced as 'a challenge trending in Japan', as described in a Le Desk article published on 11 August 2026.

Korean users did not keep the Japanese pronunciation. Instead they replaced it with 'gomap' (the first part of the Korean 'gomapseumnida', meaning thank you) plus 'tuusa' (bullfighter), giving the form 'gomaptuusa'. Making the joke work in Korean meant that viewers did not need to understand Japanese to get it, and that adaptation is what defines the Korean version of the meme. Because the source clip dates from around 2020, the phenomenon is classified as a revival, in which an older sound was rediscovered years later, rather than as a newly produced piece of content.

Usage

The basic form is a short skit with four beats. One person hands the other a piece of red clothing. The other says thank you, then adds 'bullfighter!' while waving the garment like a matador's cape, and finally charges like a bull to the sound of a bull's bellow. The comedy comes from the gap between an ordinary polite phrase and the sudden switch to a bullfighting scene.

Short videos in which a person receives something from a friend or colleague and, instead of saying thank you, shouts 'gomaptuusa' and charges
Challenge clips in which two idol group members share the screen, pass a red prop back and forth, and act to the sound of a bull
Brand accounts borrowing the same format to promote customer appreciation events and promotions
A playful substitute for 'thank you' in text messages and comment threads

Clips typically run about ten seconds and need nothing more than a piece of red cloth, so no choreography or editing skill is required. That low barrier is often cited as one reason ordinary users could join in as easily as celebrities and companies.

Spread and Variations

The spread in Korea appears to have concentrated in early to mid August 2026. A trend newsletter, Trend A Word, summarized in its 5 August 2026 issue that COWCOW's TikTok sound had begun climbing back in Japan and that Korean users went viral with it by posting videos labeled as a challenge popular in Japan. The same piece reports that the girl group Le Sserafim took part in two versions. Le Desk reported on 11 August that Le Sserafim members Sakura and Hong Eunchae performed the challenge in a YouTube segment and that the group Highlight did so on its official account. The advertising trade outlet Openads wrote on 14 August that idol and brand accounts including Le Sserafim, Highlight and Cutie Street were posting the challenge on Instagram, and described the trend as near its peak. A magazine post compiling clips by members of TWS, YUHZ, &TEAM and Baby DONT Cry has also been found.

In terms of lineage, gomaptuusa sits in the tradition of Korean wordplay that attaches an animal name or a similar-sounding word to the end of a greeting, such as 'gamsahamnidaramjwi' (thank you plus squirrel) and 'annyeonghaseyonggari' (hello plus Yonggary, a Korean movie monster). Several outlets suggested that this familiar grammar let Korean users grasp the joke immediately without explanation. From a marketing perspective, articles carrying headlines about how to make a predictable customer appreciation promotion more entertaining introduced it as a format well suited to thank-you campaigns. As with most short-form trends, however, how long the meme will last has not been confirmed.