566 Days Later

Municipal workers take a mask off a statue of a primitive man in Dalseo District of the southeastern city of Daegu, May 2, as the country allowed people to not wear masks outside starting the same day amid a decreasing trend in the number of daily COVID-19 cases, in this photo released by the ward office. The office placed the mask on the 20-meter-long and 6-meter-high structure on May 15, 2020, to encourage people to wear masks amid the surge of coronavirus infections. Yonhap

By Scott Shepherd

It's been a little over two weeks since the requirement to wear masks outdoors was lifted, but a visitor to Seoul would be forgiven for thinking that the rule is still in place. The majority of the population still seems keen to keep their noses and mouths firmly covered by the thin swatches of fabric we've come to associate so closely with the pandemic.

It may seem odd to some that so many people would continue to don their masks outside, especially considering that the temperature is rising by the day and we fast approach the sticky heat of another Korean summer. Given the context, however, there are several reasons why it isn't really that surprising.

Firstly, we've been wearing masks for a long time ― a very long time. The outdoors mask mandate lasted for 566 days. Most of the babies who were born when the requirement was first put in place are now tottering around the house and proudly declaiming some basic words. Given how long we've been wearing them, it will take a while before people feel completely free to expose their faces to the world once more.

Furthermore, given that masks are still required indoors, on public transport and at gatherings of 50 or more, it may feel like there's not much point demasking between the house and the bus or between the station and the office, only to suit back up a few minutes later.

But far stronger motivations than mere habit or convenience are keeping those masks on. Since the start of the pandemic, Korea has been rightly proud of its response to the pandemic. The previous government was well prepared and put its plans into action quickly, providing clear and consistent messaging to the population. The test and trace system, while it caused some pretty serious concerns over privacy, allowed the government to chase down the virus and keep it at bay for a long time without the need for the full lockdowns undertaken by so many other countries.

The population's willingness to work together also played a clear role in the fight against the pandemic, and the mask became a symbol of Korean society's cooperation against the virus. In a country with very strong pressures to observe collective social norms, the mask became a manifestation of conformity. When citizens donned masks, they demonstrated a willingness to participate in society, a willingness to join Korea's fight ― successful for so long ― to contain the virus.

Even as people refrained from socializing, it felt like a collective, voluntary decision. Everyone was sitting at home alone together. And when we did dare to venture outside, the mask was the primary visible sign that its wearer was participating in the collective action, that the wearer was a member of Korean society.

Good, upright members of society wore masks. It was only the poor, the drunken, the cigarette-smoker and the foreigner who people believed broke this rule: they were the ones who failed to be upstanding members of society. And as the mask-wearers walked past the reprobates on the street, many a dark glance was cast over the metal nose pin towards those free-breathing menaces. We the good wear masks. They the bad do not. Masks were no longer about public safety; they were about moral purity, about civilization itself.

But from very early on in the pandemic, they were also entwined with Korean nationalism: in late 2020 and early 2021, the previous government sent 2 million masks to veterans from twenty-two countries who had fought in the Korean War. Yet the same government had through its mask rationing system in early 2020 made it impossible for the approximately 1.2 million of the 2.5 million residents of foreign nationality who were not enrolled in the national health insurance service here to purchase masks. In response to the inevitable outcry, the government amended the rules so that all foreign nationals with registration cards would be able to access masks: this change may have mitigated the problem but it still left those without registration cards (many of them among the most marginalized people in the country) unable to buy masks.

The mask, then, has become so much more than a face covering. In fact, it seems to have been clear for quite some time that the risk of COVID-19 transmission through brief encounters outdoors is low and depends on the circumstances and public health rules, including vaccination. With 86 percent of Korea's population fully vaccinated and 70 percent having received a booster, the decision to end the outdoor mask mandate was therefore overdue. Of course, during the peak of the Omicron wave earlier this year, it would have hardly boded well for Moon politically if he had lifted this most visible of anti-COVID-19 measures, no matter what the justification.

But the timing of Moon's decision makes it abundantly clear what his motivations were. On April 27, Yoon's incoming team started hinting that they would think about lifting the outdoor mask requirement after they took office. The very next day Moon's outgoing administration started hinting that they would beat Yoon to it, and then on Friday, April 29, they announced that the outdoor mask mandate would be ended the following Monday, just a week before Yoon took office.

While the decision itself may well be the right one, it was announced suddenly, with nothing done to explain the scientific rationale for the decision, with no time for people to get used to the idea, with no convenient press leaks to soften up public opinion for such a huge shift in policy. In the past two years, Moon has shown the capacity to communicate his message well and rally the public behind his COVID-19 response. The responsible thing to do would have been to put that ability into action once again at the end of his term in office.

As it is, this just looks like a bitter last hurrah from a president whose party lost the election, a final thumbing of the nose at the new administration. No wonder so many people are hesitant to take off their masks.

In and of itself, party politics is all well and good, but this decision was an immature parting shot from the Moon administration. If it had really wanted to lift the outdoor mask mandate, it should have done the groundwork first, explaining the reasoning and preparing the population so that when it did make the announcement, people would have at least some confidence in the decision. On the contrary, most people see this situation for what it was: a final petty act of defiance by the outgoing, now former, president. Handled differently, it could have been great news. It was, instead, a disappointing end to Moon's presidency.

Dr. Scott Shepherd is a British-American academic. He has taught in universities in the U.K. and Korea, and is currently an assistant professor of English at Chongshin University in Seoul. The views expressed in the article are the author's own and do not reflect the editorial direction of The Korea Times.