Institute of Liberal Education, Pusan National University.
Uisahak. 2022 Apr;31(1):181-220. doi: 10.13081/kjmh.2022.31.181.
This paper examines the social life of masks in colonial Korea with a focus on their use in hygienic practices. It argues that masks first appeared in the disease control scene in late 1919 when the Governor-General of Korea belatedly introduced preventative measures against the Spanish Influenza pandemic. Since then, the central and regional hygiene authorities had begun to encourage colonial Koreans to wear masks whenever respiratory disease epidemics transpired. Simultaneously, Korean doctors and news reporters framed mask-wearing as something needed for family hygiene, particularly for trans-seasonal child health care, and advised colonial Korean women to manage and wear masks. This paper also reveals that the primary type of masks used in colonial society was black-colored Japanese respirators. Its design was the main point of contention in the debates on the effectiveness of masks against disease infection. Finally, it also highlights that the wide support of using masks by medical doctors and authorities was not based on scientific evidence but on empirical rules they developed through the pandemic and epidemics. The mask-usage practice would be challenged only when South Korean doctors reframed it as a "Japanese custom not grounded on science" at the height of postcolonial nationalism and the raised concern about the artifact's usefulness during the Hong Kong Influenza pandemic of 1968.
本文考察了殖民地朝鲜面具的社会生活，重点关注它们在卫生实践中的使用。它认为，面具最早出现在 1919 年末，当时韩国总督姗姗来迟地引入了预防西班牙流感大流行的措施。从那时起，中央和地区卫生当局开始鼓励朝鲜人在呼吸道疾病流行时佩戴口罩。同时，韩国医生和新闻记者将戴口罩视为家庭卫生所必需的，特别是在季节性儿童保健方面，并建议朝鲜妇女管理和佩戴口罩。本文还揭示了在殖民地社会中使用的主要口罩类型是黑色的日本呼吸器。它的设计是关于口罩对疾病感染有效性的争论的主要焦点。最后，它还强调，医生和当局广泛支持使用口罩并不是基于科学证据，而是基于他们在大流行和流行病中通过经验法则制定的规则。只有当韩国医生在后殖民主义民族主义高涨时期将其重新定义为“没有科学依据的日本习俗”，并对该文物在 1968 年香港流感大流行期间的有用性表示担忧时，口罩的使用实践才会受到挑战。
