Seshin, the Korean Body Scrub — Foreign Spending Up 462%, and How to Walk Into Your First Korean Bathhouse

What reaches you first, at the bottom of the stairs down to the second basement, is sound: a plastic bowl clattering onto tile, showers running, and the dull rhythm of a palm slapping a back. Push open the changing-room door and damp heat closes over your face, carrying the smell of soap. Koreans call this place a mogyoktang, a public bathhouse, and the service performed inside it, in which an attendant scrubs the dead skin off your entire body, is called seshin. Abroad it travels under the name "Korean scrub." According to first-half transaction figures released in July 2026 by Creatrip, an inbound travel platform, foreign spending at one-on-one seshin studios rose 462% in a single year, and spa spending rose 67%. Visitors who used to arrive with a shopping list now arrive to hand over their bodies.

At a glance: ▲Sample venue: Riverside Spa Land, 45 Guuigangbyeon-ro, Gwangjin-gu, Seoul, walking distance from Gangbyeon Station on Subway Line 2 ▲Hours: open 24 hours, every day of the year ▲Admission: sauna, daytime (05:00–20:00), 13,000 won for adults; jjimjilbang, daytime 15,000 won, night (20:00–05:00) 17,000 won ▲Overtime: 1,000 won per hour after six hours in the sauna, after fifteen hours in the jjimjilbang ▲A seshin and other individual treatments cost extra, and the prices are not published in official material ▲Inquiries: 02-455-3737, 24 hours ▲Multilingual tourist interpretation: 1330

A seshin begins only after you have soaked for 20 to 30 minutes, long enough to soften the skin. The attendant then pulls on a purple rectangular mitt Koreans call an "Italy towel." It got the name because the first ones were made from Italian-imported cloth; the thing itself does not exist in Italy and is Korean. The surface is as rough as fine sandpaper, and wet, the weave stands up stiffer still. The first pass across your back is startlingly coarse, but after a few strokes the skin flushes hot and grey rolls of dead skin come away like thread. The table is a hard, slick plastic slab, and between passes the attendant throws hot water that runs from your shoulders down the line of your spine. One thing is worth knowing in advance: the men's and women's baths are entirely separate, and you do not wear a swimsuit in the water. The only part of the building where you wear clothes is the jjimjilbang, the co-ed heated lounge upstairs.

Once you change into the house clothes, a different building opens up. Riverside Spa Land keeps a traditional bulhanjeungmak, a kiln-style sweat room fired with pine logs. Open its wooden door and dry heat dries the inside of your nose before anything else, while woodsmoke settles into your hair. Next door, a salt room floored with coarse salt presses its grains into the soles of your feet. Past the charcoal room and the ocher room comes an igloo room kept as cold as ice, where a body that has been baking cools in seconds and the skin prickles. Out in the common hall, people lie about with towels rolled into two horns on their heads. There is a Korean restaurant and a snack corner, so you can break the heat with a cold, faintly sweet cup of sikhye, a rice punch, or a boiled egg. A jjimjilbang is not a quick stop; it is where a Korean spends half a day.

The money usually leaks in one place. Once you leave this building, you cannot come back in on the same ticket. Step out to eat, or to drop luggage at your accommodation, and re-entry costs the full 15,000 won jjimjilbang fee all over again. Outside food is not allowed in either, so plan to eat inside. If you intend to stay the night, factor in the 1,000 won per hour that starts after six hours in the sauna and fifteen in the jjimjilbang. A sign at the entrance declares the place cashless, card only; whether a foreign-issued card works in the unmanned payment kiosk is not stated in official material, so ask at the counter before you queue. Anyone under 19 without a legal guardian may not enter between 22:00 and 05:00, and boys aged four and over may not enter the women's bath. If Korean becomes a wall, call 1330, the Korea Tourism Organization's 24-hour tourist interpretation line, and ask them to join you and the front desk on a three-way call.