Mascots Need a Record Too

Most mascots are born from public contests. Residents choose a name, the department in charge holds design meetings, and one year the mascot makes its first street appearance as a costume at a festival. A few years later, some quietly disappear. When a new character arrives, the boxes of old merchandise go to the storeroom.

In November 2022, Daegu MBC counted 338 characters run by South Korean local governments nationwide, including main and secondary characters. Add schools, public institutions, companies and sports clubs, and the number is much larger. The Mascot Directory at Daily Mascot alone lists 5,091. Yet there was no single record of why they were created and how they were used.

Without a record, there is no comparison. It is hard to know which mascot teamed up with local food producers to sell products, which mascot released its copyright and ended up on the wrapping paper of neighborhood shops, or which mascot was replaced after only a few years. The people who make the next mascot go through the same trial and error again.

Daily Mascot aims to fill that gap. We will write down, accurately, the background of each mascot and how it is used, cite our sources, and correct mistakes right away. We will not mock mascots or rank them to put them down. Behind every mascot are the residents who care about it and the people who made it.

A mascot is a face that shows how a region or an institution wants to introduce itself. We will write the stories of those faces every day.