Baden kor
http://en.wikipedia.org
Jjimjilbang
(December 2009)
Jjimjilbang sign in Apgujeong, Seoul
Jjimjilbang (찜질방) are large, gender-segregated public bathhouses in Korea, complete with hot tubs,
showers, Finnish-style saunas, and massage tables, similar to what you may find in a Korean sauna or
mogyoktang. However, in other areas of the building or on other floors there are unisex areas, usually
with a snack bar, ondol-heated floor for lounging and sleeping, wide-screen TVs, PC bang,
noraebang, and sleeping quarters with either bunk beds or sleeping mats.
Most jjimjilbangs are open 24 hours and are a popular weekend getaway for Korean families to relax
and spend time soaking in tubs or lounging and sleeping, while the kids play away on the PCs.
http://wiki.galbijim.com/Jjimjilbang
Jjimjilbang
Relaxing in a hot room at a jjimjilbang.
찜질방 (Jjimjilbang)
Jjimjilbangs are one of the truly great aspects of a unique Korean culture. These are large, gendersegregated public bathhouses complete with hot tubs, showers, Swedish-style saunas and massage
tables, similar to what you might find in a Korean sauna or mogyoktang.
However, in other areas of the building or on other floors, after donning your robe, you will enter the
unisex areas and will usually find a snack bar, ondol-heated floor for lounging and sleeping on, widescreen TVs, a PC bang, a noraebang, and sleeping quarters with either bunk beds or sleeping mats.
Jjimjilbangs usually operate 24 hours and are a popular weekend getaway for Korean families to relax
as the parents spend time soaking in tubs or lounging and sleeping while the kids play away on the
PCs.
Jjimjilbangs are also a great deal for the cost-conscious traveller in Korea. For 6,000-10,000 Won, one
can sleep overnight there and enjoy the bathhouse and sauna, and wake up fresh and ready to travel
the next morning. If you have bags and backpacks with you that are too big to fit in the lockers, the
front desk will usually watch over your bags at no charge for the length of your stay.
There are many words to describe Korean bathhouses and most usually mean the same thing.
However, keep in mind that while a place that says 24 hour sauna definitely will have a bathhouse, it
might also have the recreation facilities of a jjimjilbang. And a small jjimjilbang might not offer the full
services of a larger one. Check for a "24" on the sign, and make sure they have sleeping facilities if
you're planning on staying overnight.
Orientation
When walking into your run-of-the-mill jjimjilbang, you will encounter the front desk, who, upon
payment, will give you a receipt, key, towels, and outfit.
At this point you will want to walk through the doors or elevator titled 남탕(men's sauna) or
여탕(women's sauna). Depending on the place, either before the entrance or just after it, you'll find
shoe lockers. That's what your key is for. Store your shoes and go inside. Some modernized places
have keys that only work once, so once you re-open it, you might not be able to lock it again without a
trip back to front desk for a new key.
Once inside, you'll usually have somebody there or at a desk who will take your receipt and give you a
locker key. This is where you store all of your clothes and belongings. If you didn't bring a razor,
shampoo, or toothbrush with you, this person will have a small, cheap selection for you to choose
from. You can also buy a green scrub pad that Koreans like to use to scrape excess dirt and grime off
of themselves. Toothpaste and soap are free and can be found in the bathhouse.
If it wasn't already happening since entering Korea, from this point on, expect to be noticed and
watched. Korean bathhouse populations usually raise a collective eyebrow over a foreigner being in
their midst and use the opportunity to check out physical features not seen in public.
Once you are all naked, put your key band around your ankle and venture towards the glass door
heading to the bathhouse area. Towels are usually kept on the outside of this door.
Inside, there will be jacuzzis and hot tubs of various temperatures. Some will have minerals such as
jade added for health benefits.
You will also see rows of stand-up or sit-down showers. Cardinal cultural rule: Shower before getting
into the jacuzzis.
Also interspersed in the bathhouse area, you'll find the hot Swedish-style saunas, heat lamps for
lounging under, and sometimes tiny swimming pools and cascading mini-waterfalls that are designed
to act as a massage for your back. Somewhere in the mix, you'll also see massage tables manned by
a masseuse, with rates ranging from 20-50,000 Won. Sorry, but it'll be someone of your gender.
Once you are finished with your soak, head out of the bathhouse and you'll find an area with
hairdryers, cotton swabs, gel, hairspray, etc...
From that point on, after putting on a robe or T-shirt and shorts, you are ready to walk out into the rest
of the jjimjilbang and explore the unisex area and facilities mentioned earlier.
Culture
It is customary to fold the towel into a "Mickey Mouse hat" or "Princess Leia hat" as seen in popular
Korean dramas. This can be done by folding the towel into thirds lengthwise and then rolling up the
ends to form buns hence the "Princess Leia" name.
Nearly all jjimjilbangs will sell the traditional Korean drink sikhye and it is very refreshing after sweating
in a hot room. Most will also sell hard boiled eggs and as seen in dramas, Korean teenagers like to
crack the eggs on their heads before eating them.
Articles
English article from Chosun.
Jjimjilbang and Saunas in Korea: English blog with pictures, reviews and maps of spas throughout
Korea. Hosted by S. Freeman at Blogspot.
Locations
Zzimzlibang database(In Korean)
Zzroom database (In Korean)
Seoul
Great top 10 jjimjilbang list] from Joongang.
11 more recommendations from Joongang.
Itaewon Land review, located near Itaewon Station in central Seoul.
Ssukgogae Bulgama review, located near Sillim Station in southern Seoul.
Belita Land in Hongdae.
Sinchon Rest in Sinchon.
Sup Sok Han Bang Land near Sinchon and Yonsei University.
Wooridle Land II in Yeouido.
Busan
Dongnae Spa/Heoshimchung. With a capacity to handle up to 3000 naked bodies, Heoshimcheong
touts itself as being the biggest sauna in Asia. One downfall is that despite having sleeping quarters,
it's not 24 hours. Directions are tricky, but a taxi driver will simply know it as 허심청 (heo-shim-cheong)
or 동래온천 (dong-nae ohn-cheon). Throwing in the Korean word for sauna, 사우나 (sah-woo-na), may
also help.
Chuncheon
Jjimjilbang here include:
Mancheon Sauna and Jjimjilbang
Whasan Spa Land
World Oncheon 24
+
Sup Sok Han Bang Land
Sup Sok Han Bang Land (24 시간 숯가마) is a large, 24-hour jjimjilbang with sauna, unisex lounging
areas, restaurant (only open during the day), 24-hour snack bar, PCbang, sleeping rooms, sports
massage, hot room, cold room, televisions, arcade games, smoking room, and partially outdoor clay
hot rooms. It is called "soot ga ma" because the outdoor hot rooms are made from clay and heated by
burning coals; they are maintained daily. Here there is a grill which has coals burning 24-hours and
you can grill potatoes, sweet potatoes, ddeok, or corn which can all be purchased at the snack bar.
There is a sleeping area with a television partially outside as well, and this area has access to an
outside deck area for lounging, eating, or smoking.
The womens locker room has a separate sleeping room and many services are available from
massage, to ddae scrubbing, to threading, to manicures and pedicures, to special Korean weight-loss.
Costs: 9,000 Won/per person for jjimjilbang or 5,000 Won/per person for just the sauna (목욕탕). Ddae
scrubbing is 15,000 Won and massages cost anywhere from 15,000 to 70,000 won.
Location: Located up a hill near the Yonsei University East Gate. The green 7024 bus from the
Sinchon Station stops at the parking lot or you want to tell a taxi to go to the East Gate of Yonsei and
up the hill. At the bottom of the hill there is a lit sign that says "24-시 궃가마."
+
Ssukgogae Bulgama
A very modern, 24-hour, multi-floored jjimjilbang with large sauna, unisex lounging areas, hot rooms,
restaurant, sports massage, DVD bang, noraebang, and sleeping rooms.
Costs: 8000 Won/per person.
Location: Located down the hill (west side) of Ssukgogae Ipgu. If you don't live in the area, it'd be best
for you to get off at Sillim Station and take a taxi.
http://www.washingtonpost.com
A Bathhouse Immersed In Tradition
Fairfax Koreans Say Opening of Spa Is a Milestone for the Large Community
By Karin Brulliard, March 3, 2008
Inside the 127-degree Red Clay Ball room, Kum Sun Hong, 54, and her husband, Song Hong, 59,
nestled amid thousands of hazelnut-size spheres that covered the floor, a kind of grown-up sandbox
touted as "great for removing inner body toxins."
Nearby in the igloo-shaped Amethyst Gem room, two women sat chatting while a man sprawled on a
mat, soaking up the "energy oscillating waves" said to cure ailments. In the main hall, where Korean
pop music played softly from hidden speakers, people dressed in mandatory loungewear -- men in
yellow, women in orange -- lay on the 104-degree onyx floor, their heads resting on brick-shaped
pillows, their ears covered with towels twisted to form buns.
Behind the modest facade of a 1980s-era Fairfax County strip mall, Korean entrepreneurs have
brought a slice of their homeland to their new land: a much-awaited, $15 million jimjilbang, a Koreanstyle sauna and bathhouse. But patrons and community leaders say the sleek Spa World Resort in
Centreville is as much a cultural milestone as a business, reflecting both the size and evolution of the
Washington region's Korean community.
The area's Korean immigrant population is the third largest in the nation at about 59,000, according to
2006 census data, and the number of Korean-owned businesses jumped 21 percent from 1997 to
2002. After reshaping Annandale's commercial offerings and settling in large numbers in Montgomery
and Fairfax counties, Koreans in recent years transformed Centreville's storefronts, schools and
congregations.
Along the way, they have branched out from small enterprises to big chains and property
development; Spa World is owned by a Korean construction company and golf course owner and is
housed in a strip mall owned by a Korean supermarket mogul. Yet although luxurious Korean spas
exist in the Los Angeles and New York areas, homes to the two biggest Korean communities, there
was none here until recently.
"We have been waiting for a long time, because we have to travel to New York to go experience the
spa," said Kevin Park, an Annandale-based reporter for the Korea Times. "Because we have a brandnew spa, we don't have to go up to New York."
The word "spa" does not quite begin to describe a jimjilbang, a recent Korean cultural phenomenon
that grew out of a centuries-old public bathhouse tradition and now ranks first among "10 Unique
Korean Customs & Practices," according to an October Korea Times article. Spa World is a 24-7
complex with a floor space nearly that of a football field, a Korean restaurant, smoking and sleeping
rooms, a gym and a child-care center.
"In Korea, this is a family gathering place. They gather together and enjoy the full service," Spa
World's owner, Sang K. Lee, said, wiping his brow with a white towel as he stood on the heated floor.
Busy immigrants had been asking for such a one-stop relaxation spot here, he said, adding, "When
they are working hard, they are missing something: family gatherings."
Lee said he hopes the venture will encourage healthfulness and serve as a handy resting spot for
airline workers on layovers, who he said are welcome to spend the night on thin mats in the sleeping
rooms.
The complex took three years to build, with the help of more than 60 builders, engineers and computer
technicians who flew in from Korea to help. Its centerpiece is a vast main hall with smooth stone floors
heated by water pipes that run underneath, another Korean custom. At one end is a juice bar serving
$5 shaved ice with red beans. At the other are several rooms heated to desertlike temperatures and
one 54-degree "ice room," their walls covered in stones imported from South Korea and the
Himalayas.
Joyce Yang and Jong Bae Lee, both 33, dined in the restaurant on ox rib soup and slivered beef with
their son, 3-year-old Leo Lee. Large, multi-service jimjilbangs were just getting popular when they left
Korea six years ago, and they said Spa World was as opulent as the best of them.
"It's socialization," said Yang, a parent educator, explaining the spas' appeal.
http://derseb.wordpress.com/2006/11/07/jimjilbang-die-lustigste-und-billigste-art-in-korea-zuubernachten/
Jimjilbang: Die lustigste und billigste Art in Korea zu übernachten!
Da mich jetzt schon so viele Leute über die Jimjilbang ausgefragt haben, schreibe ich heute nochmal
einen extra Eintrag.
“Ja, es ist eine Sauna!” und “Ja, es ist ganz normal darin zu übernachten!”
Es läuft in etwa so ab: Man ist in irgendeiner Stadt unterwegs, es ist 2 Uhr nachts und man ist schon
ziemlich müde. Spätestens jetzt sollte man in irgendein Geschäft gehen und den Besitzer nach einer
Jimjilbang fragen. (Immer Karte dabei haben!) Normalerweise weiß jeder, wo die nächste Jimjilbang
ist. In der Not kann man auch einen Taxifahrer fragen, aber seltsamerweise geben sie diese Auskunft
sehr ungerne. Keiner von uns weiss bis jetzt so genau warum.
Dort angekommen geht man zur Rezeption, zahlt zwischen 5000 und 9000 Won (zeit- und
ortsabhängig), was so in etwa 4-7€ entspricht. Da wir gerade beim Geld sind, eine kleine Absurdität
am Rande: Es gibt hier 1000, 5000 und 10.000 Won Scheine, sprich der größte Schein ist nur 8€ wert.
Da ist es schon stressig, die Urlaubskasse mit sich rumzuschleppen. Wenigstens hat man immer
billiges Papier, um den Grill anzuwerfen.
Mit dem Rucksack und Ähnlichem aufzutauchen ist kein Problem! Dort zieht man dann gleich die
Schuhe aus und stellt sie in ein kleines Schließfach. Niemals den leicht erhöhten Boden mit Schuhen
betreten! Dann wird zwischen Frauen und Männern getrennt und man schließt alles in ein zweites,
größeres Schließfach ein.
Man kann sich dann auch noch eine Zahnbürste, Getränke und kleine Snacks kaufen. Seife und
Zahnpasta liegt frei aus. Zusätzlich bekommt man immer eine kurze Stoffhose und ein T-Shirt von der
Jimjilbang gestellt. Das legt man jetzt an und kommt in ein zweites “Areal”. Hier sind wieder Männer
und Frauen und man kann etwas essen (immer eine Snackbar, manchmal ein kleines Restaurant), ins
Internet gehen, fernsehen… etc. Ausserdem liegen dort, zugegeben steinharte, Kissen und Matten
aus, auf denen man schlafen kann. Alternativ kann man in einen getrennten Saunabereich und dort
verschiedene Whirlpools genießen.
Manche Jimjilbang erstrecken sich über mehrere Stockwerke in Hochhäusern, bei manchen schläft
man in Waben. Allen gemeinsam ist nur, dass sie dich immer wieder überraschen.
Viel kann man dabei eigentlich nicht falsch machen. Auf jeden Fall nicht mehr als ich beim ersten Mal:
Ich hab nicht gecheckt, dass man Hose und T-Shirt bekommt und nackt irgendwo in der Ecke
geschlafen. Wie bestimmt schon viele von euch mitbekommen haben, bin ich ein ziemlicher
Morgenmuffel. Es gibt bestimmt schönere Momente, als morgens als einziger Nackter durch
staunende Koreaner zum Klo zu steuern. Da kam ich mir irgendwie wie in einem Stall vor…
Noch ein paar Tipps für Nachahmer:
1. Es gibt keine Decke. Sehr gut: Ihr habt die Decke aus dem Flugzeug dabei. Natürlich nicht, ohne
den Steward/die Stewardess vorher zu fragen. Falls nicht, es gibt immer so viele Handtücher, wie man
braucht. Da diese aber sehr klein sind, behaarte Kollegen brauchen schon so an die 2-3 Tücher zum
abtrocknen, muss man sich ein gute Taktik zulegen.
2. Manchmal ist es unmenschlich heiß im Schlafbereich. Man findet aber oft (ich generell immer am
Morgen danach) ein zweiten Raum, in dem es sehr angenehm ist.
3. Kommt man spät, gibt es oft keine Matten mehr. Am besten, ihr zieht sie unter schlafenden
Koreanern einfach raus (vorzugsweise Kinder). Die wachen nicht mal auf, wenn ein Elefant die
Jimjilbang betritt und schlafen sehr gerne auf dem blanken Steinboden. Hihi, nicht wirklich! Aber es
geht durchaus, sie unter einer Hand oder so wegzuziehen. Wie weit ihr gehen wollt liegt an euch.
4. Wer auf Jeju unterwegs ist, sollte mal einen Abend in Seogwipo (große Stadt im Süden) verbringen.
Dort kann man sich einfach zum World Cup Stadion fahren lassen, denn im Keller des Stadions
befindet sich eine große Jimjilbang!
http://www.asianweek.com/2008/03/04/daily-dose-030408/
Korean-Style Sauna Offers Slice of Homeland in Va. Strip Mall
CENTREVILLE, Va. — Behind the modest facade of a strip mall, Korean entrepreneurs have brought
a slice of their homeland to their new land: a $15 million jimjilbang, a Korean-style sauna and
bathhouse. Patrons and community leaders say the sleek Spa World Resort in Centreville is a cultural
milestone, reflecting the size and evolution of the Washington region’s Korean community.
The area’s Korean immigrant population is the third largest in the nation at about 59,000, and the
number of Korean-owned businesses jumped 21% from 1997 to 2002. Korean immigrants have
branched out from small enterprises to big chains and property development.
The jimjilbang is a recent cultural phenomenon that grew out of a centuries-old public bathhouse
tradition. Spa World is a 24-7 complex featuring a Korean restaurant, smoking and sleeping rooms, a
gym and a child-care center.
http://www.nytimes.com
May 11, 2008
A Funhouse Floating in a Korean Spa
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
“This is the best night of my life!” burbled Rory as he was swashed in an inner tube around the
whirlpool section of the outdoor hot pools at Inspa World.
I have heard this before. And besides, how great could the greatest night of a life only six-and-threequarters-years long be?
Still, it was pretty cool: my stepson, Rory, and his buddies whirling endlessly around as I let the bubble
jets pound my kidneys and tickle my feet, lolling back to watch the steam rising into the night and the
jet planes drifting down into La Guardia, every once in a while lazily checking to make sure no one had
drowned.
This was the capper to a weirdly sybaritic evening: plunge pools, saunas lined in gold, jade and salt;
massage chairs; spare ribs with kimchi, Korean soap operas and a lot of viewing other people’s
tattoos.
Inspa World, a five-story 60,000-square-foot funhouse, bills itself as a “spa and water park.” But that
doesn’t quite capture it. At a mere $30 to get in, and kids scrambling around, it’s no Canyon Ranch.
And without water slides or wave machines, it’s no Typhoon Lagoon, either. The closest relative may
be the “mustard-off pools” in Dr. Seuss’s “Happy Birthday to You!”
Call it an aquarium for humans. You end up feeling like someone’s well-fed goldfish, darting around in
the bubbles, wondering what is behind the next gilded rock.
Inspa is an elaborate local copy of a jimjilbang, a traditional Korean 24-hour bathhouse where families
soak, steam and eat together, and sometimes even sleep over.
The setting is also unexpected: it is in College Point, Queens, just north of the “valley of ashes” in “The
Great Gatsby,” and hard by an industrial park.
Once you’ve fought your way off the bridge ramps (be smarter than me — avoid rush hour), you can
hand your keys to a valet.
From the building’s top balcony you can gaze over the auto-parts warehouse next door and see the
lights of the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge twinkling on Long Island Sound. Inspa World (which will change
its name in a few months because, it turns out, a West Coast day-spa chain has the same name and
threatened to sue) opened last May.
The owner, Steve Chon, a Queens architect and developer, said he spent $25 million building it and
hopes to open 19 more, the next in Dallas. There are other jimjilbangs in the United States, Mr. Chon
said, but none as large with big outdoor pools like his.
Mr. Chon said he first advertised to Korean-Americans, “but I was always targeting mainstream
Americans.” The first “mainstream Americans” to become regulars were Russians and Hasidic men
from Brooklyn, said Yong Seok Choi, Inspa’s vice president. Now there is an eclectic mix.
On the Friday night spent with Rory, his pals Oliver and Eleanor, ages 7 and 5, and their parents,
about 70 percent of the clientele was Asian. As we entered, a group of women who appeared to be
West Indian were leading in a friend. “Why is she blindfolded?” I asked, naïvely. “Bachelorette party!”
they explained.
Paying the entry fee gets one a jazzy blue or pink electronic bracelet and a bow toward the glass
men’s and women’s doors. The bracelet is both locker key and charge card for food, massages and
tube rentals at the pools.
First, your shoes get their own locker; the floor is spotless blond wood. Then, once you strip down to
just your bracelet (and assuming you do not join the man squatting naked on a table clipping his
toenails into a tray), you enter a vast room with dark stone walls, saunas, steam and many pools:
lukewarm, hot, hotter, bubble-jet, cold and frigid. As a child, I paged through pictures of a Roman bath,
wishing I’d been born then; finally, I can live it.
There are no strigils, but there are little wooden buckets and stools on which to perch, Asian style,
while showering and shaving, as well as regular showers. Toothbrushes are on offer, along with
squirts from a big tube of Colgate on a string. Push a button on the wall and a jackhammer of cold
water pounds down to massage your scalp.
The atmosphere was relaxed; no one seemed bothered by Rory leaping from pool to pool like some
crazed faun.
The ladies bath, my wife said, had scenes both sweet and mystifying: little girls scrubbing their
mothers’ backs, and women squatting over heated pots. The pots, I learned later, were herbal
steamers, supposedly very soothing after giving birth.
Exfoliating rubs were given by muscular women in traditional jimjilbang work wear: bras and panties.
Travel writers describing Korean baths always say the same thing: the mitts are so rough that your
skin rolls off in little gray worms.
Next, all clients don the house’s short cotton pajamas — gray for men, orange for women — and troop
upstairs to the sauna floor, the spa’s social center. There was something perky and democratic in the
air, all of us multiethnically together, scrubbed and uniformed like cheerful first graders. Or maybe it
was the air; the spa bubbles in extra oxygen.
Half the floor is a food court: juice bar, pizza or sushi, Starbucks or Häagen-Dazs. Wall-mounted
televisions silently play shows with English and Korean subtitles. The other half is a kitsch paradise: a
green stone meadow coursed by a running stream and dotted with igloo-shaped saunas.
The word “sauna,” a puzzling sign explains, is “from the Finnish words ‘sow’ (an admiration of ‘wow’)
and ‘nar.’ ”
The sign’s medical advice is just as strange. Heated gold supposedly releases infrared rays that suck
out bad energy. Jade fights high blood pressure, paralysis and athlete’s foot.
Hocus-pocus aside, the saunas are stunning. The gold one has tiles coated with 96 percent pure gold,
Mr. Chon said. He hid them from his own workmen during construction, and two have been pried out
by thieving visitors.
The jade one is actually dazzling geodes, the salt one has pink blocks said to be chipped from the
Himalayas. The mud in the mud one is imported from South Korea, which is apparently well-known for
its mud. It’s also the biggest and hottest — 190 degrees, too hot for me.
TAKING a sauna while stretched out on a tatami mat in borrowed pj’s is a bit sweaty and itchy for my
taste, but the kids loved testing them all. There is also a row of deck chairs beneath heat lamps for
those aspiring to feel like a carved roast in a rathskeller. To cool off, one enters the “Iceland” room,
which is lined with frosted pipes. We had a mini-snowball fight.
You can get a sea-salt pedicure or an organic peel, feel kneaded by a massage chair or sack out in
the designated sleeping area — which at different times contained a meditating man and a fussing
baby. Above that, there are three more floors. We skipped the mezzanine of personal TV chairs
because children were unwelcome, and headed to the restaurant. Basic Korean fare — pork, beef,
noodles — came with multiple side dishes for $10 to $12. My only frustration was the lack of beer.
“No spirits,” a server said.
Alcohol is banned for fear of heart attacks in the saunas, Mr. Chon said later.
Also, he said: “There are females in same area, and when men have a couple of shots, they’ll do
anything. That’s sexual harassment, especially in America.”
The ban particularly irks some guests, he added, who like hell-hot saunas with a frigid vodka chaser.
His security guards take bottles away and break up what he calls “love behaviors.”
But, Mr. Chon said, Russian guests are welcome to “use their whips, some kind of tree” — presumably
a reference to a nice thrashing with birch branches that some feel is the perfect lagniappe to a good
steam.
We spared the rods and spoiled the children, changing into bathing suits for the heated outdoor pool,
which boasts 40 different water-massage functions.
Getting a permit was a yearlong struggle because of neighborhood opposition. Offering massages
“made people think we were opening a whorehouse,” Mr. Choi said.
“Now they’ve changed their mind,” he said. “They come here, they say, ‘Whoa, this is nice.’ ”
I did not canvass the neighbors. But I believe it. Rory now wants his 7th birthday party there. And his
friend Eleanor says she is moving in.