The Korean public bath you walk into today has a tiled hall of hot and cold pools, a scrub table, often a dome kiln, and a snack bar selling sikhye (식혜). In this form it is about a century old, but its parts are older. Hot-spring bathing appears in records from the third century, and state-run sweat houses from the 1420s. Modern public bathhouses arrived between the late 19th century and the 1920s. The jjimjilbang (찜질방), the clothed, mixed-gender complex that most foreign visitors picture, became popular only in the 1990s.
The present matters too. Korea had roughly 10,000 licensed bathhouse businesses in the early 2000s and about 5,650 in 2025. Below we explain what is closing, what is replacing it, and why this is a good time to go.
Springs, temples and streams
The earliest hot-spring record is in the history 『동사강목』, which notes a brother of Goguryeo's King Seochon bathing in a hot spring around 286 CE. Bathing spread with Buddhism, and a Korean newspaper history describes temple bathhouses for monks as the forerunner of the public bath. A 12th-century account of Goryeo, 『고려도경』, says people bathed three or four times a day, and that men and women washed together in a stream in Gaeseong without embarrassment.
The Joseon dynasty (1392–1910) changed that. Confucian norms brought separation of the sexes and partial, clothed washing from a basin (대야), with ground red beans as soap. Full-body bathing was for seasonal festivals. Hot springs were a royal matter. Kings Taejo and Sejong both visited Onyang (온양), and the law code rewarded the discovery of a new hot spring with a promotion of three ranks. The regions guide covers the spring towns that survive.
The Joseon sweat house
The ancestor of today's hanjeungmak (한증막) is the hanjeungso (한증소), a state-supervised sweat house. In 1422 King Sejong ordered an inquiry into the medical value of sweat bathing. Buddhist monks ran the sweat houses, and an endowment paid for treating poor patients. After deaths from careless use, the court placed physicians at the sweat houses and made both monk and physician criminally liable for deaths caused by misdiagnosis. Separate facilities for men and women were built from 1429.
The method is documented. Pine branches were burned on the floor of a sealed room. When the room was hot enough, the fire was put out with water, and the steam heated the space. Straw mats were laid and dampened. Bathers entered wrapped in cloth or a straw sack, sweated for four to five minutes, cooled down and repeated. Kilns called hanjeungmak survive today, usually as part of a jjimjilbang; the rooms guide explains how to use them.
The first public bathhouses
Modern bathhouses appeared in the late 19th century. Cholera outbreaks made hygiene a national concern, and Japanese residents in the newly opened ports built baths for themselves. The first date is not settled. A museum curator who studied the question points to a bath advertisement in an 1897 newspaper and to a theory that dates the first public baths to the 1910s. One Korean account dates a public bath in Pyongyang to 4 June 1920. It says many Koreans objected strongly, because public nudity was seen as something only the lowest class would accept. Seoul's first modern public bath is dated to 1925. A closed bath in Gyeongju now operates as a café named "1925감포" after that year.
We found no source for the "1924 Pyongyang" date that appears in some guides. The sources give 1920 for Pyongyang (one account) and 1925 for Seoul (several).
After 1910, some bathhouses excluded Koreans who used Hangeul or wore hanbok. Korean newspapers reported the discrimination and called for baths built with Korean capital.
The chimney era
In 1947 Seoul had only 86 bathhouses, most of them idle for lack of fuel. Then the number grew quickly:
| Year | Bathhouses nationwide |
|---|---|
| 1960 | 770 |
| 1970 | 1,793 |
| 1980 | 3,671 |
| 1990 | 8,266 |
Public bathing became ordinary in the 1960s. Going to the bathhouse before a holiday or a family event became a custom, neighbors met there, and people remember drinking banana milk after a scrub (the food guide covers banana milk). With its tall chimney, the bathhouse was often the largest building on the street and a local landmark. Bath fees were tracked as a cost-of-living indicator. They were frozen at ₩950 from late 1985 until they were deregulated in September 1990.
The Italy towel (이태리타월) belongs to this era. The press credits Kim Pil-gon (김필곤, died 2001) of Hanil Textile (한일직물) in Busan. In the 1960s the company imported viscose rayon from Italy. The fabric was too rough for ordinary towels but good for scrubbing, and the name comes from the fabric's origin. One source dates the towel to 1967. Kim registered nine bath-related utility models in 1966–1969, but the plain rectangular towel was apparently never patented, and the press calls the attribution disputed. Professional scrubbers, the seshin (세신) attendants, appeared in the 1960s or the 1970s, depending on the source; see the seshin guide.
Home bathrooms spread from the 1980s, but heating oil was expensive, and many home tubs were used for storage, laundry or kimchi. A museum curator said in 2020 that daily bathing at home had become common only in the previous 10–15 years.
The jjimjilbang boom
From the late 1980s, bathers shifted from soaking pools to sweat rooms. The jjimjilbang became popular in the 1990s, and late in that decade the rules were eased to allow 24-hour operation. From the 2000s, complexes combined baths, sweat rooms and cinema rooms, and the bath became a leisure space for friends and families. The bath-types guide sorts out what each kind of place offers.
Licensed bathhouse businesses peaked at roughly 10,000 in the early 2000s. Sources put the peak year at 2001, 2003 or 2004, because they use different registers. One analysis of permit data counts 9,919 in 2003. In 2004, closures (725) exceeded openings (639) for the first time, and closures have exceeded openings every year since.
You may read that the yangmeori (양머리), the "sheep head" towel fold, comes from a 2006 TV drama. We could not confirm this. The drama's encyclopedia entry does not mention the towel, and Korean press reports say only that dramas and idol videos show the fold. What is documented is the souvenir trade: by 2026, Korean TV and idol content had turned the yangmeori towel and the Italy towel into souvenirs, and foreign shoppers at Namdaemun Market asked for the Italy towel by its Korean name.
The decline, in numbers
Ministry of Health and Welfare counts of licensed bathhouse businesses, as reported in April 2026:
| Year | Nationwide | Change from previous row |
|---|---|---|
| 2000 | 8,904 | |
| 2010 | 8,426 | −5% |
| 2020 | 6,529 | −23% |
| 2025 | 5,656 | −13% |
Two other outlets citing the same ministry give 5,668 for 2025. Estimates of closures from 2020 to 2022, the pandemic years, range from about 730 to 1,375, depending on the dataset.
Seoul had 663 licensed bathhouse businesses in April 2026, and 132 of them had operated for 30 years or more. A count based on Seoul's permit records fell from 1,764 in 1995 to 510 in 2025, a drop of 71%. Busan peaked at nearly 1,500 bathhouses in 1996 and had an estimated 500 operating in February 2025; Tokyo has around 400.
Famous names closed too. Dragon Hill Spa in Yongsan closed during the pandemic and had posted no reopening notice as of August 2024. Siloam Sauna at Seoul Station closed in 2020–2021, and Itaewon Land was demolished at the end of 2019. In Daejeon, the Yuseong Hotel, a hot-spring hotel founded in 1915, closed on 31 March 2024. Owners who remain name older customers, home bathing and utility bills as their problems. One sauna in Gunpo reported about ₩30 million a month in upkeep in 2026, and its staff had fallen from more than 30 to about 10 since the pandemic.
What is replacing the neighborhood tang
Three things. First, large jjimjilbang and spa complexes are gaining foreign customers. In Netflix's KPop Demon Hunters (June 2025), the main characters say they want to visit a jjimjilbang together, and card data showed foreign spending at saunas and baths up 37% year on year in the third quarter of 2025. Second, young Koreans are paying for privacy. Finnish-style private saunas such as 시수하우스 in Sinsa-dong sell 90-minute solo sessions; it opened in February 2026 and two months of bookings filled at once. Third, closed baths are becoming cafés and galleries, such as 1925감포 in Gyeongju and Bugangtang (부강탕) in Seoul's Sangdo-dong. For people without heating at home, the public bath is a basic service, and cities are stepping in: Seoul runs "companion bathhouses" (동행목욕탕) for vulnerable residents, and Taebaek is building a municipal bath.
Why it matters to visit now
Korea lost about 870 licensed bathhouse businesses between 2020 and 2025. Owners quoted in 2026 reports, several of them in their 70s, said they could not hold on much longer. The large complexes are gaining customers. The small neighborhood tang (탕), with old tiles and regulars who will correct your washing, is the kind of place that is closing. A 2025 Korea Times report notes that Japanese bathing tends to be quiet, while Koreans often talk as they bathe; the small neighborhood bath is a good place to see that.
Go on a weekday morning, check the admission in the prices guide and follow the first-visit guide for a mogyoktang (목욕탕). Our directory shows which places were confirmed open, and when.