This study aims to provide an analysis of the extended uses of the Korean polysemous lexical items kephwum and pepul. Focusing specifically on their extended uses during the COVID-19 pandemic in Modu Corpus, which are accounted for in the newspaper genre published in 2020-2021, this paper argues that the extended uses are categorized into the following major groups: those referring to the ephemeral nature of bubbles (e.g., housing kephwum/pepul), and those evoking an enclosed space with boundaries (e.g., quarantine kephwum/pepul). It further argues that the changing meanings of the Korean polysemy are metaphorically motivated (Lakoff 2006[1993]) via ABSTRACT ENTITIES ARE PHYSICAL ENTITIES, SIGNIFICANCE IS SIZE, and STATES ARE LOCATIONS. This paper reports that the COVID-19-related extended meanings of the loanword pepul have been more frequently accounted for than those of kephwum in the data. It contends that this asymmetry is due to the fact that the concept of EPHEMERALITY of the original word kephwum is not coherent with the other sense of ENCLOSURE as the concept of ENCLOSURE entails that its wall stands firm enough to form a physically non-ephemeral structure (181 words).