Outwith: Hit the floor and wash away your worries in a bathhouse

Published on Saturday 11 October 2008 20:18

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 modelled 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 South 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.

South 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.

Kim Eun-yeong was relaxing in a common room at World Cup Spaland. "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 nine-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.

Many South 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.

At the front counter, customers pay about 8,000 won, or 3.30, 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.

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. Many Koreans believe heat can help cure some illnesses.

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.

His girlfriend, Yang Eun-jeong, 25, agreed: "We women also believe we become closer when we get naked and bathe together."