Introduction:
Credit: Imagine Korea
After demolishing the house in which he lived for 30 years, Mr. Toilet, Sim Jaedeok, built this house in the shape of a toilet in order to celebrate the establishment of the World Toilet Assosciation (WTA). He named it Haewoojae, which means "a house to reliive one's concerns." This is a term that is used temples when referring to the restroom. Construction began in May 2007 by architect Go Giung, and finished on November 11, 2007. Haewoojae was credited as being the biggest toilet sculpture by the Korea Record Institute in 2007, and it got a lot of attention by domestic and foreign media outlets. After Sim Jaedeok passed away, his family donated the house to the city of Suwon in July 2009. According to his will, the city of Suwon followed through on making his house a cultural exhibit. In turn, they used it to commemmorate Mr. Toilet.
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| The Founder |
A Date to Remember:
Almost fittingly enough, the museum was opened on October 30, 2010 the day before Halloween. Did Mr. Sim know about this date and was he trying to create a place meant to horrify the locals? Just kidding!
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| Rodin would be proud! |
My wife and I made our trek to this place and when I say, trek, I mean it. Mr. Toilet House was NOT easy to get to. It was a really hot day, so we got a couple of iced lattes at the cafe next to it before exploring the Toilet House. Once we got there, we saw most of the funny or unique displays outside and saw them within 30 minutes. The statues were pretty humorous and one was a coped statue of the famous "The Thinker" by Rodin. At this place you can see him thinking on "the throne" (toilet). Haha!
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Just a mother and son staring at poop
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Other displays show funny sculptures of people squatting as they're about to relieve themselves as you can see above. There are also other displays showing what Koreans did with feces before toilets came into existence. Overall, it was pretty educational and interesting. There just weren't that many displays to see in total. After doing that, my wife and I went inside the first building and saw other displays regarding the history of toilets and household plumbing. The bad thing about it was that the displays didn't have many English explanations and they were mostly in Korean. Personally, I could only read a word here or there, so my wife translated some of them for me. My wife and I spent about 10 minutes inside that building, which was a small two-story building. On the other side there's one more building that has funny displays of animal poop based on what they eat, which poop is healthy, and which poop is not healthy. Kids and parents had fun with this and you can imagine and I thought it was pretty entertaining.
Here's a side note: Even though Koreans are fairly conservative, they aren't afraid to talk about poop and they have an interesting fascination with the subject. There's even a poop cafe in Seoul that many expats have blogged about. Here's just one "crappy" (pun intended because of it) blog about it among many! The blog is actually good, so I'm being literal in this case. Haha!
Now let me finish telling you about our experience at Mr. Toilet's House. The last thing we did was go up to the roof of the second building, which has a nice view of the museum and its surroundings. You can also see the beautiful scenery of Suwon around it. After my wife and I finished enjoying the view, we decided to find something to do next. However, keep this in mind. There's nothing to do around the museum and there aren't any subway lines near it, so you need to take a bus to your next destination. We ended up checking out a lake in Uiwang, but we took a couple of buses to get there. Because of the inconvenience of getting to this place and because it's so small, this will probably be my first and last visit to this museum. But if you live in Gyeonggido or you want a very unique experience to post on your blog (smile) and/or post a ridiculous picture of yourself there (see below), you should go and check out Mr. Toilet House.
How to Get There:
[Subway + Bus]
Sungkyunkwan University Station (Seoul Subway Line 1), Exit 1.
- Take bus 64 in front of Yuljeong-dong Catholic Church.
- Get off at Dongwon High School Entrance at Haewoojae bus stop.
- Take a right at the Imok Sageori (four-way intersection).
- Cross the street and continue walking 700 meters to reach Mr. Toilet House.
Admission: Free
Parking: Free
More Information: Mr. Toilet's Website
Scott Worden (The L.A./Seoul Guy)
Instagram: l.a.seoulguy
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