Dongnae: a history of hot-spring bathing in Busan

01

Why Dongnae

Few places in Korea show the history of bathing as clearly as Dongnae in Busan. Its hot springs have a local legend, a dated building record and a modern bathhouse, and each tells you something different about how the town and its baths grew up together.

If you’re visiting, it’s also an easy way to connect an old hot-spring district with a bathhouse you can still walk into.

02

A history recorded in stone

The firmest evidence is the Onjeong Gaegeon-bi (溫井改建碑), a stone monument from 1766. It marks the rebuilding of the hot-spring baths under Gang Pil-ri, then magistrate of Dongnae.

The National Research Institute of Cultural Heritage has transcribed and translated the inscription. It mentions stone baths built in 1691, whose roof had decayed and whose tubs had become blocked.

Gang Pil-ri’s rebuilding put up a nine-bay building with separate baths for men and women. The inscription lists the stages of the work and the names of the people who did it.

So by the 1700s the spring was a bathhouse that someone had to staff, repair and pay for.

03

What the inscription can tell us

The inscription also praises the water’s healing powers and the magistrate’s good work, as commemorative stones of the period usually did.

It’s reliable on the facts: the baths existed, were rebuilt and were laid out in a particular way. The claims about healing show what people believed about the spring in the 1760s. They aren’t medical evidence about the water.

04

Around the district

The monument is one stop on Dongnae District’s official walking route, which also takes in the old hot-spring streets and a free public foot bath.

Local tourism material tells how a woman found the spring after watching a lame crane bathe in it and walk away healed. It’s the town’s favorite story about its spring, and nobody can put a date on it.

05

Hurshimchung

Hurshimchung (Heosimcheong) came much later. The Korea Tourism Organization says it opened in October 1991 as part of a Busan redevelopment project, planned as a large city hot-spring complex for bathing and resting.

So the building is about 35 years old, even though bathing in Dongnae goes back centuries.

Dongnae District says Hurshimchung uses natural hot-spring water from sources developed for the building.

06

Visiting

You can see all of it in an afternoon: the 1766 monument, the hot-spring streets around it and a soak at Hurshimchung. A lot has changed around the water since 1766, from the buildings and the size of the baths to the reasons people come.

Walk the route first, then go for your soak.

07

Sources

• Onjeong Gaegeon-bi, the walking route and the crane legend: Dongnae District (dongnae.go.kr)
• Inscription transcription and translation: National Research Institute of Cultural Heritage (portal.nrich.go.kr)
• Hurshimchung’s opening: Korea Tourism Organization (english.visitkorea.or.kr)