Mr. Toilet House, Suwon

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I have been wanting to visit Mr. Toilet House for a couple of years, but because I knew it was pretty close, I hadn't gotten round to it. I finally managed to schedule it in, on a free Saturday morning. After some research on naver (the Korean Google) I found that I could take a bus directly from my house to the museum. Score! The bus journey did take forever though, well over an hour as the bus wound its way around various parts of Suwon I had never been to. It was about a 5-10 minute walk from the bus stop to Mr. Toilet House.

We arrived at the museum, and of course, the first thing we did was use the toilets. Very clean, as you would expect. They also have a special children's toilet separate in the garden. The outside walls were covered with pictures of poo. Korean children are obsessed with poo, so this place is perfect for them! Outside there were old toilets that were now filled with flowers. Toilets as vases, great idea. We headed into the museum to take a look around. We were greeted by the staff, and given some leaflets about the place in English. Also there is no entrance fee, but there is a donation box, which we happily put some money into. We wandered around the ground floor, the museum is quite compact, so it didn't take long to go around it. There was some kind of presentation going on too, so we had to miss out part of the museum.

Mr. Toilet House is called Hawwoojae in Korean. It is derived from the word Haewooso, which is the name used in Buddhist temples to refer to a toilet. Haewooso also means a room where you can relieve yourself of your worries. The house, Haewoojae, was rebuilt and completed on 11th November, 2007 by Mr. Jae-duck Sim in order to commemorate the World Toilet Association and to spread knowledge about the importance of toilets throughout the world. The Toilet Culture Movement started in Suwon in the 1990s. We looked at the pictures on display that showed different types of public toilets that had been used in Korea. Some of them looked pretty grim!

Jae-duck Sim founded the Toilet Culture Movement. He was actually born in his grandmother's toilet. He used to be the mayor of Suwon and he wanted to do something about the state of the public facilities in the city, as public toilets are often seen as unclean areas. In 1996, whilst promoting the 2002 World Cup, Mr. Sim and the city of Suwon pledged to beautify the city's public toilets. Mr. Sim lead an impressive life, attending high school and university, and becoming a teacher and then a government official. He later became Mayor of Suwon, president of the Korea Toilet Association, a member of the National Assembly, and World President of the World Toilet Association before passing away on 14th January, 2009. I was impressed with his dedication to his cause. It is something that I take for granted growing up and living in developed nations, having access to proper clean, flushing toilets. But visiting this museum reminded me how vital good sanitation is, and how some places in the world don't have it. There was a display showing how ghetto some toilets looked in different countries of the world and how they've been spruced up.

We headed upstairs in the museum. The stairway was lined with children's drawing, showing lots of different poos, I think the poo wedding was my favourite. We looked around the exhibits that detailed Mr. Sim's life and the World Toilet Association. There was a book with a message to Mr. Toilet from Doctor Shit. We were creased up at this. The World Toilet Association was founded on 22nd November, 2007; it is an international NGO and its purpose is to improve human health and hygiene, specialising in toilets. A scary statistic is that 40% of the world's population (about 2.6 billion people) does not have access to proper toilets, and as a result of this, 2 million people die every year from waterborne contagious diseases. The WTA is trying to raise this issue internationally, so people know how important toilets and the need to improve facilities worldwide. We also looked around the temporary exhibit, which was different animal poos. There were plastic replicas that you could play with.

After playing with the animal poo, we headed downstairs and out to look around the gardens. We asked the lady at the reception desk, where we could take a photo looking down on Mr. Toilet House, as from above it looks like a toilet. But the woman said it wasn't possible. We probably could have tried to get up to the highway some how and take one from there, but we weren't feeling brave enough to tackle that. The garden is filled with different styles of toilets that have been used throughout history in Korea. The first set we came across were Hoja, the male urinals and Byeongi, the female toilet. These toilets were used during the Baekje Dynasty and the Hoja is shaped like a tiger with its mouth open. The female toilet is designed so the seat is higher in the front and lower at the back for convenience. These designs also allowed the faeces to b easily poured on to the fields.

We then walked through a giant squat toilet, which had a bog lump of poo in it. The next thing we came across was Ddong Jigae, which is an A-frame carrier. In the olden times poo was like gold for Koreans, as Korea was an agricultural society. Excrement was not thought of as sewage but as a necessary fertiliser for soil. The next toilet we saw was Nohdutdol, which is two large stepping stones. A Nohdutdol is two large stepping stones that you place your feet on. The Nodutdol at Bulguksa temple in Gyeongju is believed to have been a flushing toilet used by a noblewoman during the Sills Dynasty. Nohdutdol also has another meaning, it is the two large stepping stones that were placed in front of gates for mounting and dismounting from horses.

The Tongshi toilet was used on Jeju Island. It is a stone hut, built above an enclosed pen, where pigs are raised. The pigs are able to absorb nutrients that the human body did not absorb. This toilet is a good example of an environmentally-friendly toilet since the waste is fed to livestock. Mae Hwa Teul (apricot flower frame) and Mae Hwa Gurut (apricot flower plates) were portable toilets that were used in the royal palace. The king's physician was said to check the king's faeces in order to determine the king's state of health. We also saw some statues that showed people in different poses having poos. Too funny! We saw the Tumak toilet, which is a thatched toilet, kind of like a tepee.

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