KTX bathrooms

Generally, public bathrooms in large heavily trafficked areas of Korea are really really nice. I'm talking about places like highway rest stops, Seoul Metro stations, and the like. I've posted previously about nice bathrooms in the Seoul Metro, and more recently about female bathroom cleaners in men's public restrooms.

In that last post I mentioned that I'd never before seen a sign saying that men should not use the bathroom while it was being cleaned by a female employee. The sign was in the KTX (bullet train) station Dongdaegu.

Recently in our local KTX station, Singyeongju (i.e. "New" Gyeongju), I saw a more typical sign, warning about the presence of a female cleaner but not suggesting that anything should be done about it.

The men's bathroom at the Singyeongju station is really really nice. Take a look at this:

Those are urinals on the right; the stalls are on the left. Separating them is a natural wood partition with each section designed to look like old-fashioned Korean-style courtyard doorways. On the back wall is a photo of a traditional Korean village. Just visible on the left, decorating the walls and doors of the stalls, are pictures of iconic Gyeongju archeological treasures.

And check out this specialized stall. Remember, this is the men's room.

Agi-rang hamkke 아기랑함께 means "together with a baby"

If you really need to sit on a toilet and you've got an infant with you, you're pretty much out of luck in most public bathrooms. But not here.

Fold down the little seat, strap the kid in, and do your business while entertaining (or consoling) the little tyke. The inside walls are decorated with cartoony, kid-friendly images: balloons, flowers, etc.

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.