This post is about men's bathrooms

This is not the first post on this blog about men's bathrooms, and I suspect it won't be the last.

On my way to Changwon 창원 last weekend, I changed bullet trains at Dongdaegu 동대구 station. The train I got on was actually two trains stuck together. It was announced that after pulling out of the station, the train would separate and go to two different destinations.

Two trains joined

But I digress. This sign was hanging on the wall just inside the entrance to one of the sizable men's rooms at Dongdaegu Station.

Korean, English, Chinese (in a notably ugly font), Japanese

There is an Asian zone within which female employees clean men's public restrooms while they are in use. It includes China, Taiwan, Korea, and Thailand, but I haven't traveled widely enough to provide exact boundaries. I have had on more than one occasion the experience of peeing at a urinal while a middle-aged woman is standing behind me mopping around my feet.

It's hard to say to whom this is more degrading, or whether it is degrading at all. It's a cultural phenomenon that I just can't wrap my head around. In cultures that are traditionally quite conservative when it comes to keeping the sexes separated, it's never made sense to me that you would have women watching men relieve themselves. On the other hand, the women are usually quite old; perhaps they are considered desexed by age.

Whether or not this is related to the fact that in these same countries (and Japan) it is typical for men's bathrooms to be situated in such a way that passers-by can get a glimpse of men peeing as they walk past the open door I can't say. (For pictures, see the last half of this post.)

Anyway, the unusual thing about the sign reproduced above is that it claims that the bathroom is closed during cleaning. I've never seen a sign like this before, and I wonder if it's an attempt to "Westernize" the public face of Korea (much like the "walk on the right" campaign)—a theory supported by the use of multiple languages. But nobody was falling for it. The bathroom was briskly in use, men walking in and out completely oblivious to the female workers doing their job inside. None of those workers were young or smiling like the lady in this picture.