Variety of restrooms and closets at Toilet Culture Park (Suwon, South Korea)

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

A lavatory, a ladies' room or even a water closet - there are so many euphemisms in our language for designating such a secluded place as a toilet. And while the Russians go to "powder their nose", the British - "to visit Mrs. Murph ", and the Spaniards do -" change the water for the canaries "- Koreans proudly flaunt the toilet bowls in Toilet culture park (Restroom Cultural Park) in the town Suwon.

The theme park amazes not only with its size, but also with an abundance of exhibits, sculptures and graffiti. The exhibition center itself resembles a giant toilet bowl in shape, and the park paths leading to it are "decorated" with bronze figures of people, of course, in characteristic poses. The history of the emergence of the park is interesting: the unique building, which got into the Guinness Book of Records, was built by the mayor of Suwon, Sim Jae-duck, who, over the years of his professional activity, received the good-natured nickname "Mr. Toilet". Koreans honor him for modernizing the sewer system in the 1980s and later becoming the founder and first president of the World Toilets Organization. Sadly, Sim Jae-duck didn't live to see the theme park opening, he died in 2009.

The organizers of the park note that the Park of Toilet Culture performs not only an entertainment, but also an educational function: some exhibits demonstrate modern public toilets in developing countries, others, on the contrary, show ancient Roman, medieval European toilets; the park also features ancient toilet flushing devices.

According to Lee Youn-Sook, one of the park's administrators, the park is an extremely important place to visit in order to change your attitude towards toilets. People think about food every day, but almost never about visiting the toilets, although they visit a secluded room several times a day. Lee Youn-Sook is convinced that for a modern person, the restroom is a special cultural space, the importance of which for health, sanitation and protection of water resources is difficult to overestimate. Sim Jae-duck, the founder of the World Toilets Organization, also considered the closets not only a place where people go when needed, but, first of all, a place of rest, cleansing, and most importantly, introspection. By the way, the arrangement of such a delicate place as a toilet is creatively approached not only in South Korea, but also in some African countries. On our website Kulturologiya.ru we have already written about the luminous toilets, which recently appeared in the stands of sports stadiums through the efforts of the Refunc team.