A carved wooden Korean mask with exaggerated features and leather ties. Sits in wooden box with lid.

Masks with exaggerated facial features such as this are worn during the traditional Hahoe masked dance. Each of the dance’s nine characters – the bride, the scatter-brained meddler, the butcher (with dancing ox), the grandmother, the coquette, the wayward Buddhist monk, the village fool, the aristocrat and the scholar – wears a different articulated mask, which can convey a range of emotions depending on the position of the performer’s head. This particular example is for the Yangban or aristocrat. If the performer moves his head back, the lips of the mask open, making him seem to laugh.

Nine of the Hahoe mask forms were designated National Treasures of South Korea in 1964.