My first English "student" in Korea was a gentleman I met in a neighborhood store. He is studying to be a tour guide because he knows a lot about Korean culture. He taught himself English and has a crazy extensive vocabulary. And he currently owns a store that sells organic side dishes (panchan) where all the ingredients are from his farm. He's pretty darn forward and I hope others follow his footsteps and step up their food game.
Anyways, I go see him once a week and we speak in English together. At first he just went around his store showing me the different types of food he makes and how he makes them. Then we started talking about Korean culture and he's helped me a lot during my stay in Korea to help understand why things are a certain way.
Today, I asked him about the public toilets in Korea. Specifically, why are there so many, and why are they so clean?
I'm sure I've talked about bathrooms in Korea before but they are just about my favorite thing about Seoul. Public bathrooms are everywhere! Subway stations and randomly on the street-and there are signs that point to them, they are stocked with TP and there is always someone cleaning them!! It's seriously awesome.
The ahjussi explained to me that Seoul hosted the summer Olympics in 1988 and the government went through a campaign before that to upgrade the city in order to prepare for all of the tourists. They were genius enough to include many public bathrooms in that campaign. They're so clean because the government would inspect the bathrooms. If the bathrooms were clean in a specific district, that district would receive government subsidies.
How they have kept the bathrooms clean to this day, boggles my mind. I'm just going to say THANK YOU and hope some day the US starts to entertain the idea of clean public bathrooms too.
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