One-quarter of South Koreans Ready to Wear Masks Indefinitely

While the United States continues an ongoing culture war on the necessity and effectiveness of masks during the COVID-19 pandemic, here in South Korea that debate is over. Or maybe more accurately, it never took place. Mask wearing has long been a normal part of life. But new numbers from Gallup Korea will appall American libertarians and the American right. A quarter of South Koreans—a plurality in the survey—prefer to continue masking indefinitely.

The COVID-19 pandemic brought a number of suspect takes on why Asian nations—and South Korea in particular—were better at controlling the pandemic at its outset. Quite a few of these takes revolved around the supposedly docile South Korean public. Never mind that the living memory of most South Koreans includes violent demonstrations to overthrow a dictatorship and million-strong candlelight protests to oust a more recent president.

Another suspect take includes South Koreans wearing masks because of their collectivist nature and a deeper care and understanding for their communities. Not likely. A significant body of work finds South Korea to be a low-trust society.

Instead, it is important to think about the lived experience of many South Koreans. Setting aside the use of masks during days of yellow dust, vacation time and sick days are much more restricted than in other OECD countries for much of the working population. According to a 2017 study, South Koreans took an average of 8.6 days off annually, even though the law stipulates full-time employees should receive 15 days of paid leave per year.

There are a variety of reasons for this under-utilization of paid time off. It may be unsatisfactory to readers, but the reality is that the pressures that come with working in a Korean office have to be experienced to be understood. Having lived and worked in Seoul for more than a decade I saw some of that up-close, although as a non-Korean I was in no way subject to the worst of those pressures. But I certainly saw and discussed them with Korean colleagues and friends at great length. To get some sense of it, there are a number of K-dramas that address that pressure. (The drama Misaeng offers a gentler introduction to the subject.)

And if paid time off is widely under-utilized, sick leave is even more so. Kim Gang-lip, former Vice Minister at the Health and Welfare Ministry, addressed the challenge of the government’s “stay home when sick” campaign, which only kicked off last year, initiated by the pandemic.

“Personally, I found it hard getting used to the concept because all my life I was trained to believe not calling in sick was a sign of a strong work ethic,” Kim said at the time.

In my experience, that thinking is not unusual. The end result? You don’t take time off for a cold. Instead, you put on your mask and you go to the office. Seeing commuters, colleagues, and friends in masks was not an occurrence ushered in by the global pandemic. And today it is not linked to government mandates or perceived overreach. More importantly, it’s not associated with some juvenile conception of freedom and restrictions on that freedom. It is a feature of daily life.

Even with the context above, Korean attitudes on mask-wearing are still surprising. In recent Gallup Korea polling, a plurality of Koreans (27%) said that masking should continue indefinitely, and was consistent across age groups. It should be noted that the question’s language did not present any conditions such as vaccination or case rates. It’s also worth mentioning that 21 percent said that masking should stop in the first half of next year and another 23 percent said masking should stop in the second half of 2022. But the least supported option (11%) was to stop masking this year, 2021. Not only was this the least supported option, but the youngest Koreans (6%) were the least likely to want it.

That last point deserves some thinking beyond the armchair analysis I can provide here. But I am beginning to hear anecdotes. And those include comments that mask-wearing is “more comfortable” for some. That is in quotes because I don’t think it denotes masks being physically comfortable. Rather it is about being more comfortable in public by being better able to conceal one’s physical appearance, reducing the concerns about being judged for that appearance. That could certainly be tied into the importance placed on physical appearance. But I don’t think this tells the whole story.

Vaccination rates have now surpassed 70 percent fully vaccinated and 80 percent have received one dose. One health official suggested that once that number hits 85 percent, the requirement for masks in public could be rolled back. (Those comments were controversial.) Now, as the government transitions to “living with COVID,” the earliest the public mask mandate will be rolled back in mid-December. But judging by the data, mask-wearing in public may persist long after health officials drop the mandate.