jjimjilbang

Korea has a wonderful thing in common with Finland: the Sauna Culture!
Here it's not imported, it's called jjimjilbang and it's an endogenous tradition... which makes me think once again that Finnish people are those in Europe more closely related to the populations who live in the far East of the Euro-Asia Continent... after all they were all coming Centuries ago from Central Asia, isn'it?

By the way, sticking on the korean sauna culture, i have experienced it a couple of times during my stay here, at least before I was sick. and it's quite remarkable.
You arrive in the place, at the entrance you put your shoes in a locker, then you give the keys to the keeper and he or she will ask you to pay (between 5000 and 10000 won i.e. 5 to 10 USD) and he or she will give you a key for another locker in the sauna and a sauna uniform which is a sort of pijama that you need to wear in the mixed areas. Now, the lockers are separated between men and women and they give you access to the bathtubs, steam baths etc... which has more in common with the Arab-Turkish Hammam rather than the Finnish Sauna, there you also can scrub yourself with a special glove which you can buy there for very cheap. Once you are fresh and clean, you can wear your pijama and go to the mix area... here you can sleep, you can eat, surf the internet, watch tv, pay for a massage and use the sweat room. The sweat room is more closely similar to a finnish sauna as a concept, but you are sweating in your pijama.
Overall it's a very relaxing atmosphere, they are open 24h a day and the cool thing is that people here spend so much time doing millions things which you would not immagine doing in a sauna (even karaoke). I have been answering the email from the office during one night, being internet there much cheaper than the hotel room which I am staying (which is only few floors up on the same building).
Definitely something you should not be missing in your korean experience, there are plenty of saunas in Seoul but it's not easy to spot them for a non-korean reader, watch out at the sign in the picture, this identifies the jjimjilbang and is easier to recognise rather than the korean writing. Enjoy!