“What kind of bathing style do you like?”
Bathing is more than just cleaning your body!

Let's think about a bathhouse scene.
Adults relax in the hot and cold pools in the middle, while children splash around in the cold pools on the other side.
I sit on a plastic chair in front of the faucet, scrub my face with an Italian towel, wash my hair under the shower water, and lather my body with soap.
Some people leave their backs to the bathhouse attendants, and in the locker room, local people gather in groups of three or five and chat.
It's a very familiar bathhouse scene.
However, the public bathhouses that are so familiar to us would feel very unfamiliar to people from other countries and times.


Bathing is both an instinctive habit of animals and a part of human culture.
The way humans bathe has continued to change over time and across cultures.
Whether to steam, soak in a bath, scrub, or change clothes instead of washing varies from culture to culture.
During the Joseon Dynasty, people did not often take full-body baths because it was considered rude to show one's naked body to others, but for ancient Romans, public baths were essential social activities that had to be visited every day.


While working as a curator at the National Folk Museum of Korea, author Lee In-hye traveled to bathhouses across the country to study bathhouse culture.
"The History of Washing" is a book that contains the author's experiences and research of bathing twice a day and visiting local bathhouses.
Sanitary practices, public welfare, penance, religious ceremonies, social activities, enlightenment movements… .
Bathing, which has become a daily routine today, has various meanings.
From the bathhouse ruins of the Indus Valley Civilization to today's neighborhood bathhouses in Korea, let's explore the fascinating historical stories surrounding bathing!

Let's go back to the original question that opened this article: "When was your first bath?"
The reason I was confident that the interviewer's and my answers would not differ significantly from 'I was bathed by medical staff at the hospital where I was born' was probably because I knew that he and I were born in different countries, but at similar times and in places with similar medical systems and infrastructure.
If he had been born and raised in a region or religious sphere quite different from the culture of my home country, South Korea, or if I had been born to a midwife during the Joseon Dynasty and bathed in boiled peach tree branches, I might have been able to give him the answer he wanted.
Conversely, I too might have been curious and waited for his answer.

---From "When was your first bath?"

So, what did public bathhouses look like to Christians? They weren't simply places to wash.
It was a place for leisure and pleasure, and sometimes even a place where mixed bathing and prostitution took place.
Therefore, to Christians, public bathhouses would have been considered dens of sin and dens of the devil.
The same goes for bathing.

Asceticism was not universal in early Christianity, but it gradually spread through the third and fourth centuries, with monks and saints practicing physical mortification by not washing.
The impurity gained by giving up the physical pleasures of bathing was a sign of holiness, and this asceticism was called alousia, meaning 'unwashed state'.

---From “Part 1, Part 3: The Unclean Is the Sacred”

This special steam is called 'Royal'.
In Finnish, 'höyülü' means steam or vapor, but 'röyülü' is used to refer to the steam produced in a sauna.
The word Löwülü also includes the meanings 'spirit, breath, soul'.
The core of the sauna, the lowilly, has different characteristics for each sauna.
To experience these different types of Löwülü, people visit several saunas and share their experiences and knowledge with others.

---From "Part 1, Chapter 9. Breathing in the Steam of the Soul"

Unlike modern times, where all family members share a single washbasin, in the Joseon Dynasty, each person had their own basin.
My mother-in-law, father-in-law, husband, myself, and even the servants each hung their own basins in their own rooms.
Therefore, in the case of wealthy noble families who even had servants, there were more than ten basins used in one household.
There were more basins than rice bowls.
So, even if people in the Joseon Dynasty preferred partial bathing, it is difficult to say that they were dirtier than when they enjoyed full body bathing.
---From "Part 2, Chapter 3. It is not polite to show your naked body"

This structure contrasts with the disappearance of the concept of a sanitary police in most European countries in the early 20th century, while Japan maintained the system in its colonial Korea to justify its rule.
It didn't matter to the Japanese whether Koreans actually kept their bodies clean or not.
Those who are ruled by those who rule have always been objects of management and supervision.
Public bathhouses were not only places to wash one's body, but also symbolic spaces where the bodies and cleanliness of Koreans were censored from a Japanese perspective.

---From "Part 2, Chapter 9: Spaces of Discrimination and Surveillance"

Italian towels sold out like hotcakes as soon as they were released.
It was so popular that even counterfeit products were produced.
In 1969, there was a counterfeiter who imitated Italian towels that were sold for 30 won each and sold 1,200 of them for 28 won each.
What’s more, he even threatened Kim Pil-gon, the patent owner, saying, “If you mess with me, I’ll kill you.”157 In 1974, another incident occurred.
A person who sold 54,000 counterfeit products at 33 won each to public bathhouses across the country was arrested for violating patent law.
In this way, Italian towels have become more than just bathing tools; they have become cultural icons.
---From "Part 3, Chapter 7. Everyone Has Their Time"

In cities where population mobility is high and human relationships are formed based on occupation and purpose, local communities tend to weaken.
However, in the older public bathhouses, private, local groups still formed, which over time solidified into communities.
People naturally gathered at the public bathhouse without having to set a time to meet.
It was like a village hall or pavilion in the countryside.
Members here fostered camaraderie by engaging in conversations about the community and their neighbors.
Public bathhouses served as a medium that united city dwellers.

---From "Part 3, Chapter 9. The Bathhouse Remains a Memories"