Korean Semiotics of the Face Mask: Meanings of the Mask, Meanings of Everyday Life during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Surgical face masks have become commonplace during the COVID-19 pandemic, producing debates on mask practices. This paper explains the semiotic practices of the face mask among Koreans, who accepted the mask early and have simultaneously remained uneasy about it until late 2020. It aims to explain this paradox by discovering various meanings Koreans ascribe to the mask. A content analysis of reader responses to news articles finds that Koreans signify what the mask means for life in various voices (i.e., instrumental meanings) in which they concurrently reveal multiple and contradictory meanings of everyday life (i.e., existential meanings) during the pandemic. Eight themes-beneficence, futility, nuisance, routine, privacy, dominance, collective commitment, and intricacy-constitute what the mask and everyday life mean. This study also finds that contradictions among these meanings are resolved either incidentally by their being simultaneously harbored in one piece of the mask that stays and holds tight in most circumstances or semiotically by certain integrative meanings embracing multiple meanings at once. The study argues that the meanings of the mask reflect meanings of life that are often contradictory and yet held together during the pandemic. It demonstrates that mask sociology serves as a promising humanistic inquiry on how the Maussian totality of everyday life is concretely experienced in the context of the pandemic.