No hairnet, bare hands — a worker in a South Korean face mask factory has incurred public wrath for contaminating the items with his unhygienic ways.

A series of photos uploaded onto an online community on Wednesday (March 4) showed the young man rubbing his face onto a bundle of face masks that were being packed for sale.

Another photo showed him placing the masks into a box while barehanded.

The images, which are screengrabs from the man's Instagram Live video, soon went viral and sparked a slew of negative comments when netizens realised the face masks in question were meant for children.

Face mask manufacturer Wellkeeps identified the man as a student in his early 20s who had joined as a part-timer at their company on Feb 25.

He reportedly took off his hairnet to take a photo while his manager was away on a break.

According to the student, he did so because "the small masks were so pretty" and that he "wanted to show off (his) part-time job at a famous company."

Welkeeps apologised in an official statement, saying that it was "extremely sorry for creating such concern and inconvenience."

All the masks produced in the two hours before and after the video was taken were discarded. The total number of masks scrapped was 10,000.

Though Welkeeps was previously praised for keeping prices the same even during the mask shortage in late January, their credibility had suffered due to this incident.

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rainercheung@asiaone.com

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