China might be a rising power in the region, but in the lavatory department, there’s simply no comparison:
Korea is becoming a beacon to the rest of the world in an unlikely and more often hidden area — the toilet. As China looks ahead to the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, it has dispatched officials to Korea to investigate and learn from the lavatories here, and most of the major press outlets — China Central Television, the People’s Daily and Beijing TV among them — in a nation notorious for the state of its restrooms are urging the world’s most populous country to learn from Korea’s infrastructure for the lower functions.
On the other side of the Pacific, both the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times recently waxed lyrical about the state of Korean toilets, where people do their business amid “softly lilting violin music and beautiful pictures hanging everywhere.”
35 Comments
the point that school toilets lag behind is very true, certainly in my school anyway. Being a girls high school, the students don’t clean the mens toilets, which means its left to the maintainace man who simply hoses the room out from the doorway. the toilets have never had a propper clean in the years that i’ve been here, so its well advised to take cre of business before leaving home as far as possible.
i also liked the law on the toilets. good to see that korea is taking its sex equality seriously, in some areas anyway.
Singapore.
Now if only they could place rolls of tissue in the stalls…that would be progress.
korean toilets suck! i’m constantly amazed at the pathetic state of the lavatories in this country. if one were to judge a country by its toilets, korea would definitely rank as an undeveloped country. not only are they dirty and stink, ajummas just seem to wipe the filth around on the floor and not really clean anything. people spit phlegm on the floor, especially in the stalls, there’s rarely any toilet paper, any toilet in a department store or other place with a lot of people has all the stalls filled with smokers, men are incessantly puking all over the floors at night (how is it they can get to the bathroom but not to a toilet anyway?) and there is always that engineering problem where people can see men at the urinals from outside. put the door on the other side!!!
The floors in a lavatory are always mysteriously wet with some fluid or another. Is it urine? Spittle? Phlegm? Plumbing leaks? The latter would be a relief, as they are caused by poor workmanship rather than slovenliness.
if there ever was an article that proved the korean press printed what it wanted to believe were true as opposed to what is true, this is it.
i submit that …a beacon to the rest of the world… be changed to “a backed up cesspool for its citizenry.”
Yes I think the news got a little swept up with this one. As an avid fan of fine porcelain I would have to give the Vietnamese top rank in Asian toilets. When I visited I was amazed that even though this country had bombed to the Stone Age that inside every modest dwelling was fine French inspired white marble seat. Simple yet, a beacon of civilization in an otherwise third world country.
What really concerns me is that the Korean will be apt to copy the Japanese and build the Captain Kirk special. You know what I mean the seat for business that has twenty buttons on it in Japanese with heated seats and a sanitary covering. I always find it difficult not knowing the word for ?€œFLUSH?€? in Japanese and having to ask the local resident for assistance in removing the evidence.
By the way as a good follow up someone should research the toilette ghosts of Korea. If I remember right there was a museum display 6 years ago about Korean outhouses and the various ghosts that haunted them.
I’m sure Korea is better than China; but a beacon to the world. Not a chance, for all the reasons already articulated Reminds me about the joke regarding the Japanese. Korean and Chinese who are travelling by foot through the countryside and are froced by a thunderstorm to take refuge in a pigsty. I’d be right outta there with the Japanese. I leave it to you to decide who’s next out (if anyone!).
Kang Chol-hwan, a former NK inmate and a good journalist, in his prison memoirs is sympathetic to China. Nonetheless, he noticed that “toilets in China are worse than toilets in a North Korean prison camp” (or something to this effect - too lazy to look for the exact quote).
I am not going to try and compare Korean crappers to those of any other country but I think that we can all agree that ANY public restroom you are forced to use out of necessity or desperation, generally we wish that we A) could hold it until we get home B) could suit up into a complete chemical suit or at least C) had hip-waders to put on to wade through it all. To hold Korean restrooms up as any sort of enviable standard is worse than advocating relieving one?€™s self out in public.
One thing I have noticed is that Korean men ALWAYS spit into the urinal before using it. I do not know why but would be interested in learning why they do this. The restrooms in our office are all non-smoking so it is not that?€?
One thing I have noticed is that Korean men ALWAYS spit into the urinal before using it. I do not know why but would be interested in learning why they do this.
I’ve noticed this too and am also curious.
spitting’s a whole ‘nother thread.
disgusting in bathroom’s (and difficult to get in the toilet bowl properly), the worst spitting environs this side of the pacific must be korean bathhouses. of all the places to hock, why would anyone choose a hot, wet, communal area for cleaning yourself, most especially where no one is wearing any shoes or slippers?
well, i remember years ago when mcdonald’s came to china and talked endlessly about how they were single-handedly bringing hygienic restrooms to the masses one burger joint at a time. so on my first trip to beijing a couple of years ago, i actually went to that first, famous mickey d’s to see what all the hubbub was about. the whole experience was a terrible letdown and i only spent about thirty seconds relieving myself of number one and decided to pack out number two because the smell was so noxious.
There should be law that prohibits bidets on public toilets.
[At McDonald's famous "clean" Korean bathroom, I] only spent about thirty seconds relieving myself of number one and decided to pack out number two because the smell was so noxious.
Part of the problem is that the U-shaped “trap”, used in modern plumbing everywhere else in the world to block the ingress of sewer gas, is not all that popular for install into the floor drains — since they’re embedded in concrete I guess that’s for convenience. So the floor drain is usually a source of foul odor.
The other stupid plumbing practice encountered in Korea is the lack of floor seal for the toilet. Instead of being put onto a rubber or silicon gasket, Korean toilets seem to be “sealed” with concrete paste pushed into the space where the toilet meets the floor. Concrete is porous: Couple that with all the whiz and spittle that get splashed around in public bathrooms, and eventually the “floor seal” ends up as a stink sink, fouling the air for all comers.
But hey, Mr. Foreigner, it’s you that’s wrong. My plumber insisted, in a long argument, that soft gaskets “won’t work in Korea!”
right. the korean argument that gaskets wouldn’t work here is about as bulletproof as the argument that they’ve finally figgured out a foolproof method for keeping ondols from rotting out concrete floors.
I wouldn’t say it’s the “beacon of the world”. That’s really stretching it even for a Korean newspaper. On the other hand, it’s not that bad unless you’re in the rice bushes and minus the smelly sewer problem caused by non-u shaped pipes. Of course, older buildings and houses are also problems, since after all, just 20 to 30 years ago, most of Korea were out house type squat toilets. 30 years ago, I had to go out of my house since the hole in the ground toilet was outside in the freezing rain. And then get this, there would be this shit truck that comes every week or so to pump out all the shit from the house ground and take them to .. guess where.. the rice and vegetable paddies where the farmers used to spread them as fertilizers (apparrantly the Chinese are still doing this). 80% of the Korean population in the 70’s and even in the 80’s carried around parasites (the same kind that were found in the Chinese imported kimchi). The rate dropped to 2.7% of Koreans carrying the parasite bug in 1997 with advent of modern toiletry and stopping the useage of human shit fertilzers. Mysteriously, that 2.7% has suddenly now grown to 3.5% in 2004. hmm..I wonder why?
If you think it’s bad in Korea, try Canada. Outside of Quebec (which the toilets are immaculate), and outside of privately owned houses, the public toilets in are mostly just plain foul. The number #1’s are mostly OK (but could be better), it’s the number #2’s. People just don’t care to take a piss without lifting the seats. We have urine and even shit all over the seats, and we have people who just refuse to flush.
The article did take it too far, I’d assume that China simply has an interest in how Korea had improved its toilet issues before the World Cup and possibly the 1988 Olympics, seeing as how Beijing is in a similar boat now.
The toilets in many places in Korea are pretty gross but are probably at least acceptable in most of the places that tourists/visitors for the events are likely to visit- which I think would be the main concern,
They’ve obviously never been in a Japanese bathroom.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_toilet
This is the most awesome thing I’ve ever seen.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wi.....en_lid.jpg
EVER.
I wonder what wireless protocol it uses… can you imagine the fun to be had by hacking your neighbor’s toilet? So awesome.
Kimbob,
there are still the shit trucks that come to my school and empty the tanks outside the building, i don’t know where they go after that though. Bear in mind that my school is a medium to large public high school in one of koreas FEZ’s so the level of toilet development isn’t too great once you get out of seoul (and yes seoul toilets are far better).
Rowan, at least they’re using tanks these days. In the old days, those poor ajoshis had to throw the buckets tied to ropes down the holes and bail them out by hands. Now that was one nasty job. And this was in the middle class neighbors of Seoul, not somewhere out in the rice paddies.
Rowan, at least they’re using tanks these days. In the old days, those poor ajoshis had to throw the buckets tied to ropes down the holes and bail them out by hands. Now that was one nasty job. And this was in the middle class neighbors of Seoul, not somewhere out in the rice paddies. Back then, toilet papers were a luxury. Everyone used newspapers to wipe their cracks - not pleasant to say the least.
nice.
from my limited historical understanding, toilet paper was first invented in china around 13th century or so.
any korean claims to having invented TP earlier?
Koreans invented metal moveable toilet paper.
Well, by and large, traditional Korean toilets are certainly nothing to admire. But there are nice public washrooms here and thereusually ones in buildings/facilities only built in the last few years, of course. I recall a subway station on Line 7 near Apgujeong-dong (maybe Banpo?) that had been awarded a plaque a few years ago for having the best public washrooms in Seoul, or something like that.
I once had to use a portable toilet, which here in Canada, I view with the utmost trepidation…the smell wasn’t any more pleasant, but it had been decorated with potpourri!
And lest we forget, Japan’s toilet culture is similarly disparate. Sure, there are the fancy-schmancy high-tech Toto toilets many people have in their houses (they exist in Korea, too; I think they’re made by Kyerim (?)), but there are holes in the ground and far, far too many of the porcelain squat toilets. (At least a few years ago, all the toilets in the Nagoya railroad station men’s room were squat-type, except one that was labelled “Western Style,” which evidently no one ever used, because it was by far the cleanest one…boy, was I happy when I discovered it!)
The one and only time I encountered a toilet on a Japanese train (long-distance semi-express, definitely not the Shinkansen), it was sqaut-type, too. As a westerner, I could not even begin to imagine attempting to do my business squatting over a hole, in a moving train at 100 km/h (or whatever speed it was going).
There’s an advantage for squat toilets. You don’t have to SIT or touch anything. Just hover above and do your thing. Sounds good to me, except I imagine my legs would get tired. This is probably a bit more sanitary, but I haven’t popped a squat on one nor have I lived in a country full of them long enough.
Hopefully most people know where to drop the bomb.
Yeah, there is the hygiene issue, but my legs kill me when I have to use one.
…And I’m always insanely afraid of, er, making a mess….
there is always the issue of which way to face with the squat ones too. i always figured that you just face the door, but the only time i have ever used on it was sidways so i didn’t know, and as it turned out i faced teh wrong way, but who’s every going to find out…..
The biggest problem with the smell in Korean toilets is the fact that most Koreans still put their shit-stained toilet paper in the garbage beside the toilet.
I worked for a major Korean company in Yoido, and many of the men still practiced this.
Flush the paper and much of the reek would disappear.
Tongue and cheek award of 2005 goes to the Marmot for his “Korea is becoming a beacon to the rest of the world in an unlikely and more often hidden area ?€” the toilet.”
The statement is true only insofar as one defines primitive cultures as “the rest of the world”. Korean toilets are indeed better than those of the Karen hillspeaople of Thailand where you shit in the woods while weilding a stick to fend off pigs.
In the interests of truth, however, rather than a becon to the world, Korea is an IMPORTER and EMULATOR of the Western world’s water-flushing porcelin pedestal toilets. Attempts to copy and emulate the rest of the world have so met with mixed results with progress remaining to be made.
As a consolation prize however, Korea is becoming a beacon to the world for Hitler’s “great lie” theory and racial supremecism.
A fe other areas where Korean toilets lag world standards:
1-the smoke hazards of Korean toilet stalls
2-the pervasive sounds of huge noisy gobs being spat into the urinals
3-drenched and tacky floors and signs instructing short pee-ers to “please take one step closer to the urinals”
4-post-lunch crowds of bulemic women vomiting up their meals
5-the brushing of teeth at sinks with the accompanying sound of the contents of lungs being hawked up in the process.
6- The absence of open stalls every morning and the two hours following lunch.
7- the absence of toilet paper or presence of either thin ply paper or newspaper.
8- low facets with rubber hoses draining into a floor drain in lieu of sinks.
*I don’t understand why judge judy is so pissed off at this sort of silly matters.
Yes, some Korean toilets are dirty and smelly, but some others are not. For J.J., I would recommend you to use the restrooms in a department store or some decent restaurant or cafe, not the ones in a backstreet, game centers, or cheap bars, clubs etc, which are dirty in many other countries as well - )
** However, I strongly agree that Korea definitely needs a great improvement in their secondary schools’ restrooms!!
this is the perfect topic to be “pissed off” about…
and i was restraining myself from bringing up sinks that don’t drain anywhere. you know, you turn on the water and it goes down the pipe for about three feet and then it dumps on your shoes because it’s not connected to anything.
if this happened once or twice i would have thought it an anomaly.