It's time to take off mask

By Jed Lea-Henry

Under the slight tumble of another COVID wave, this might not be the best moment for a discussion such as this. But then again, when would be?

As things got worse, better and then much worse, all the talk was rightly of individual safety, protecting the vulnerable and unburdening the hospital system. Then as things trended more positively, it was all about consolidation, preventing future problems and continued vigilance.

If there is space in this model for an end-date, a finish line where people will finally take off their masks and get back to normal, then someone should speak up, loudly, and announce it. If that finish line involves "zero-COVID," then save your breath.

So let us all meet in the uncontroversial middle: wearing masks outside. When the mandates were first launched, many Koreans wore their masks (we were told) as they would obey any other law, as good ― though begrudging ― citizens.

This mandate ― at least its outdoor cousin ― has been gone for nearly five months. And you wouldn't know it to look around!

Walk any street, of any Korean city, at any time of day, in any weather, and the vast majority of faces you see are still covered. This takes some explaining ― something that the "good citizen" argument cannot.

People obediently following government regulations don't then ignore their government when the regulations change, unless they were never really following at all.

A more likely explanation is, they were scared then, and remain scared now! This at least matches what we are seeing on the ground (masks still being worn outside) ― but it also comes with its own set of problems.

If you have an underlying medical condition, or fit into an 'At Risk' category in some other way, the fear ― or at least caution ― is appropriate. Beyond this small fraction of the Korean population, things begin to break down fast.

Most of the people still wearing masks are reasonably healthy, double or triple or quadruple vaccinated, holding antibodies from infection or exposure, and, of course, are outside where we know that the virus does its weakest work.

If genuine fear is an active reason for these people to continue wearing masks, then something very unpleasant has been allowed to take residence in Korean society.

There are plenty of things to be appropriately fearful of … and plenty of things not to be. And any way you twist it, for most people here, any good reason to be scared is long gone.

So, like witnessing an agoraphobic patient irrationally terrified of the world outside his room, we ought to now be worried about the long-term damage that all this terror, anxiety, panic, and fear is causing. Even if felt just a little bit by each Korean, then the sheer number of people feeling it (judging by masks still being worn) ― and the associated mental health issues ― would still be worrying.

This would certainly be bad enough, but something else is also happening.

Things have to get a touch anecdotal here, still, try running an experiment in your head. In front of you is a neat cross-section of Korean life: 100 people, touching all demographics. And, in line with those same societal trends, 95 are wearing masks, while five are not.

Can you picture what those five look like? What they sound like? I bet you can!

Chances are, they are either very old men, very old women, young children naive to the virus or youngish men in their late teens/early 20s (also foreigners, but this is slightly cheating). What they definitely are not, are young-to-middle-age women.

A society which balances unachievable financial burdens on its men, against unhealthy beauty standards on its women, the Korean obsession with female appearance has always been problematic.

Even before the pandemic hit the peninsula, it was common enough for young women and girls to wear masks ― blaming allergies, pollution or fine dust; anything for an excuse to hide away for a day or two, and get some temporary relief from all that pressure.

So no doubt the mask mandates originally came as a happy escape for such people. Still, this is no more of a solution to vanity and judgment, than heroin is to physical pain. And in the case of masks, they cannot even be said to ease that underlying agony.

Hiding away from a problem rarely brings positive results. When soldiers return from war with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), their therapists will re-expose them to loud noises and sudden movements ― forcing them to overcome their trauma, rather than avoiding it.

Australian data from the darkest months of the pandemic ― when most people were trapped in their houses ― showed a massive increase in online searches for Botox and other cosmetic treatments. Then when the lockdowns eased, plastic surgery clinics were flooded by women seeking procedures for problems that only began to bother them during those pandemic days, alone and isolated.

Back here in Korea, young women (and plenty of men too, of course) must have ― at first ― enjoyed the mental holiday that covering their faces allowed them to have. Now, nearly three years later, that mask increasingly looks like an addiction ― a comforting vice they can't quite shake.

Perhaps some of this is just a type of social gravity, with people wearing the mask only to not stand out from the veiled crowd. But the reasons now matter less than the behavior. However they might have got here, these people deserve our worry, our concern and our help ― as well as a government that reaches out to them through nationwide public service campaigns.

God knows what the long-term effects of this might be, but it will have an effect of some kind. Something that will be paid, invariably, through the shared mental health decline of a generation, and primarily by one gender.

In the short term, tourism will languish, with foreign travelers not wanting to wear a mask (with all those attached memories) during their holidays. And perhaps ― as tends to be the case ― Korean society will be better motivated by these economic hiccups, than by questions of well-being and quality of life.

Until then Koreans will continue to be split between the tiny minority confident enough to show their faces, and the rest ― inexplicably tentative, nervous to smile, nervous to frown, to speak, to express themselves, to be looked at in any way.

If you think that this is all wrong, that there still remains a good reason to continue wearing the mask outdoors, then the onus is on you. Explain your roadmap, your baseline for when it does end, for when they should be taken off.

If not now, then when? If not soon, then at what cost?

Jed Lea-Henry (http://www.jedleahenry.org) is a writer, academic, and the host of the Korea Now Podcast (https://korea-now-podcast.libsyn.com).