Korea’s bathhouses satisfy nostalgia

“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 popularised early last century by the country’s Japanese occupiers, but eventually fell out of favour 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 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.

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. The temperature in the room, appropriately called a kiln, was more than 200 degrees Fahrenheit.

“My family comes here at least once a month,” said 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.

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.

By the late 1990s, many bathhouses had turned into true recreation complexes.

Recently, the Government banned minors without adult escorts from jjimjilbang from 10 PM to 5 AM, after reports that the sites were becoming havens for runaways.

Chun Byung-soo, who opened World Cup Spaland 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.

But the jjimjilbang are as important for socialising 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.