Does visibility mean vitality? Korean signage and staged vitality on Xita Street, China

Linguistic landscapes in minority-ethnic spaces make cultural diversity publicly visible, affirm minority communities’ historical presence, and support local memory within a shared national order. However, minority-language visibility does not necessarily indicate communicative vitality, especially in contexts shaped by national-language governance, commercial restructuring, and tourism development. Grounded in language commodification theory, this paper examines Korean signage on Xita Street, a historically Korean-Chinese commercial enclave in Shenyang, China. Comparing signage patterns between 2019 and 2025 and drawing on 38 semi-structured interviews, the study shows that Korean has declined as a dominant language of storefront communication but remains visible as a marker of ethnic authenticity, food culture, and Korean-style atmosphere. We conceptualise this condition as staged vitality, in which minority-language presence is publicly maintained and symbolically valued, while everyday use, intergenerational transmission, and communicative centrality weaken. The study contributes to linguistic landscape research by distinguishing visible presence from lived vitality and cautions that preserving minority-language signs alone is insufficient for sustaining linguistic inclusion.