A few weeks ago, April and I went to our favorite Korean Spa. It's near Mitsuwa which is an amazing Japanese market with ramen, taiyaki and katsu stands that serve food on real plates like civilized people and the seating overlooks the NYC skyline. We go to the spa, eat too much and then wander the aisles to look for delicious treats to bring home.
The spa has many beautiful little rooms covered in jewels, steaming with mugwort, warm and dry with salt to chose from. They have a little place that serves shaved ice covered in glistening fruit for when you get too hot.
Going to a Korean spa is very different than going to a Russian/Turkish spa in that unless you go on a "boy" day or a "girl" day, in the U.S. at least. The Russian/Turkish is just about completely co-ed, except the locker room. The Korean spa has many co-ed rooms to chose from, but it also has a very gendered component to it. If you don't enjoy gendered experiences or consider yourself more gender fluid/trans*, a Russian/Turkish spa may be a better choice for you. Russian-Turkish spas are also lots of fun. There's steam rooms and everyone wearing mud masks, super hot cave like rooms where the jockish clients will do push ups to really feel the burn, banny venik massage where someone hits you with dried branches made from oak, white birch, and eucalyptus (it feels good, trust me), ice cold pools to dip into when you get too hot, yummy borscht and older people drinking vodka without a care in the world. It's much more boisterous and has more of a party atmosphere.
The Korean spa is meant to be more of a place of quiet relaxation. Cell phones are highly discouraged, talk in general is discouraged. In terms of it being a more genderedThere are rest areas for men or women
(sleeping at the hearth of the goddess, soup recipe, decorating wrapping, simple pleasures, reconnecting, dealing with less simple pleasures, dealing with fam, etc)