Korean baths

For All Kinds of Good, Clean Fun, Koreans Turn to Bathhouses
By CHOE SANG-HUN
SEOUL, South Korea — When South Koreans evoke the good life, they talk of a “warm back and full stomach.”
Nowhere has the Korean longing to lie on a heated floor (a feature of traditional houses) and eat one’s fill found fuller expression than in the jjimjilbang, the 24-hours-a-day public bathhouse.
But calling the jjimjilbang a bathhouse hardly begins to describe its attractions.
“Here, you take a bath and a sauna,” said Kim Eun-yeong, 40, a frequent visitor to World Cup Spaland, one of the city’s largest jjimjilbang. “But you can also eat, sleep, date, watch television, read, play computer games. It’s one-stop total service in the Korean way of relaxing.”
The jjimjilbang is modeled on the public bathhouses that were popularized early last century by the country’s Japanese occupiers but eventually fell out of favor when showers became a standard feature of Korean homes. In their modern incarnation, the bathhouses are a reflection of South Korea’s relatively newfound wealth, but also a way to satisfy nostalgia.
Koreans often say they are drawn to a jjimjilbang because they miss the ondol, the heated floor most families slept on until they began moving to high-rise apartments and Western-style beds. The floor is enough of a draw that some families occasionally spend the night in the bathhouse’s common rooms.
“The first thing we Koreans think of when we’re feeling stiff and sore is lying on a hot floor,” said Lee Jae-seong, 35, who works for a television station.
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The communal nature of the jjimjilbang also suits many South Koreans; until recent decades, most people lived with their extended families.
On this recent day, Ms. Kim was relaxing in a common room at World Cup Spaland. She had just crawled out of an igloo-shaped room. Inside, a dozen men and women in identical yellow T-shirts and shorts huddled on a layer of snow-white rock salt.
“My family comes here at least once a month,” said Ms. Kim, who teaches Japanese at Hanyang University in Seoul. “When my friends and I want to get together, we say, ‘Let’s meet at a jjimjilbang.’ We even held our school reunion here.”
Her 9-year-old son, Cho Yoon-geun, was lying next to her on the heated floor, reading a comic book. Sprawled around them were men, women and children, some asleep, their heads resting on wooden-block pillows. Others were watching a soap opera.
The first public bathhouse was built here in 1925, mostly to cater to Japanese colonialists, but the institution quickly became part of Korean social life. Most urban neighborhoods had a bathhouse, as did small towns. Inside, patrons sat in or around large, sex-segregated baths filled with extremely hot water, gossiping and scooping water on themselves with gourds. Scrubbing other bathers’ backs, even strangers’, was common practice.
Many Korean adults share a childhood memory of being taken to public baths for no-nonsense, sometimes tears-inducing scrubs by their mothers. The bathhouses began adding amenities in recent decades as more people bathed at home. Those included steam rooms and professional body scrubbers, barbershops and hair salons, and communal sleeping rooms, where harried business people — often expected to work long hours and stay out late drinking with colleagues — could come during the day for a nap on a heated floor.
By the late 1990s, many bathhouses had turned into true recreation complexes, and going to one became as much a part of Korean social life as going to the movies. In 2006, there were more than 13,000 in the country, more than 2,500 of them in Seoul. Some can accommodate thousands of people.
Because they are open around the clock and are relatively inexpensive, the complexes have attracted budget-minded travelers, who stay in the communal sleeping room. Recently the government banned minors without adult escorts from jjimjilbang from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m., after reports that the sites were becoming havens for runaways.
At the front counter, customers pay about 8,000 won, or $7, pick up their top and shorts and a towel and enter the sex-segregated bath halls. There, for an extra fee, they can be scrubbed by a professional using exfoliating mitts.
From the bathing halls, patrons of both sexes dressed in the facility’s “uniform” step out into the common room, which usually looks like a mix of hotel lobby, giant living room and small shopping mall. Some jjimjilbang have karaoke rooms, concert halls, swimming pools, even indoor golf ranges, as well as cafeterias and rooms to watch videos.
But a jjimjilbang’s reputation owes much to its saunas.
Some feature heated huts suffused with the aroma of mugwort (important in traditional medicine). Sometimes the walls are studded with jade and amethyst, which many Koreans believe emit healing rays when heated.
Chun Byung-soo, who opened World Cup Spaland five years ago at Seoul’s World Cup soccer stadium, said the pioneers of jjimjilbang were inspired by the ancient Korean custom of sitting in giant charcoal or pottery kilns for heat therapy. Many Koreans believe heat can help cure some illnesses.
But the jjimjilbang are as important for socializing as they are for restorative treatments.
“We don’t consider someone a real friend until we take a bath together,” said Han Jae-kwan, 25, a college student.
His girlfriend, Yang Eun-jeong, 25, agreed: “We women also believe we become closer when we get naked and bathe together.”
The two were playing the board game Go after emerging from a sauna. Since most young Koreans live with their parents until they marry, jjimjilbang have become popular places for couples to spend time together.
“We often come here on a date,” Mr. Han said. “At a cafe, the owner gives you an unwelcome look after a few hours if you don’t order more. But here, you can stay as long as you want.”
Ms. Yang winces as she recalls some scenes she has witnessed in the jjimjilbang: young couples kissing and a girl sleeping with her head on her boyfriend’s arm in a room full of strangers. Such public displays of affection are still generally frowned upon.
Snoring is another problem, when people doze off on the heated floor. So are the potential complications of so many people sleeping together.
“At night, many different families sleep on the same large floor,” said Ms. Kim, the Japanese instructor. “Sometimes, they get mixed up while they’re sleeping. It can be embarrassing.”