World Cup Spaland in Seoul has a sauna with a rock salt floor and is 93 degrees Celsius.

By CHOE SANG-HUN

SEOUL, South Korea - 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 modeled on the public bathhouses that were popularized early last century by the country’s Japanese occupiers but eventually fell out of favor 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.
The communal nature of the jjimjilbang also suits many South Koreans; until recent decades, most people lived with their extended families.
On this recent day, Ms. 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 huddled on a layer of snow-white rock salt. The temperature in the room, called a kiln, was more than 93 degrees Celsius.
“My family comes here at least once a month,” said Ms. 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.
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. Inside, patrons sat in or around large, sex-segregated baths filled with extremely hot water, gossiping and scooping water on themselves with gourds. Scrubbing other bathers’ backs was common practice.
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 .
By the late 1990s, many bathhouses had turned into true recreation complexes, and going to one became as much a part of Korean social life as going to the movies. Customers pay about 8,000 won, or $7 , and enter the sex-segregated bath halls. There, for an extra fee, they can be scrubbed by a professional using exfoliating mitts. Some jjimjilbang have karaoke rooms, concert halls, swimming pools, even indoor golf ranges .
But 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.
But the jjimjilbang are as important for socializing 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.”