The National Human Rights Commission of Korea (NHRCK) has ruled that the common practice of charging women separately for towels and soap at public bathhouses while providing them free of charge to men constitutes gender discrimination.

NHRCK’s Discrimination Remedy Committee determined that a bathhouse that was providing towels and soap free of charge to men while imposing an additional fee on women amounted to discrimination. It ordered the bathhouse to take corrective measures and recommended that the head of the local government provide administrative guidance, the commission said Thursday.

The case began in September last year, when a female bathhouse customer filed a complaint with the NHRCK, arguing that it was unfair for only women to be charged for towels and soap. The bathhouse said towels were frequently lost in the women’s section and that it had therefore begun charging nonmember female customers an additional fee. It also claimed that other bathhouses operated in the same manner.

The NHRCK, however, said that even if the recovery rate for towels in the women’s section was relatively low, the problem was attributable to individual users. Making all women customers bear an additional cost based on the behavior of some users amounted to a measure based on gender stereotypes and generalizations, it concluded.

The commission also said that imposing different terms of use based on gender constituted discrimination beyond an individual’s responsibility, particularly because the bathhouse had not considered alternatives such as strengthening towel return procedures through deposits or placing soap in fixed, attached dispensers.

The NHRCK further noted that public bathhouses have a public service character and said local governments have a responsibility to supervise and manage such facilities to ensure that customers are provided with equal, nondiscriminatory conditions of use.

This article from the Hankook Ilbo, the sister publication of The Korea Times, is translated by a generative AI system and edited by The Korea Times.