Seshin, the Korean body scrub

세신(때밀이)이란

Seshin is the scrub. A worker scrubs your body with a coarse exfoliating cloth while you lie on a table inside the bath area, and the dead skin comes off. People find that description alarming and the experience much less so.

Reviewed 2026-09-27 · Updated 2026-09-28 · Written from the public sources listed below

How it goes

You soak first. Warm water softens the skin so the dead skin comes off more easily during scrubbing. Before or while you soak, you tell the worker how many of you there are and what you want, usually either the full body or just the back.

Then you lie on the table and turn when asked. It does not take long: in one account on Korea's official website, a first timer's scrub with a massage took under twenty minutes. Many places offer an oil or aroma massage on the same table at extra cost, and a worker may add a hair wash or a face mask. What is on offer varies by bathhouse.

Things worth knowing before you go

You are naked for it, on the bath side, and the worker is the same gender as you: national bathhouse rules require staff in the bath and changing rooms to work only on their own gender's side. It is completely ordinary here and nobody makes anything of it.

Cash is common, and payment is often taken up front. The scrub may be run separately from the bathhouse itself, so it may not go on your locker key and card payment is not guaranteed.

Not every bathhouse has one, the scrub counter may keep its own hours, and a popular worker can have a queue. Ask at the desk on the way in rather than at the end of your soak.