tourism

Kaesong is noted for world-renowned Kaesong Koryo insam (ginseng). And it has another pride which is on a par with the former. 

It is samdaem sand bath. 

Origin of samdaem 

Samdaem means “next to sam, or insam”. 

According to an old story, there lived a couple in a village, who had no children until they were over 40 years old. 

One day, they took insam as prescribed by a famous doctor. But there was no sign of pregnancy though two months passed.

So the wife visited the doctor again, who said that in the human body the stomach is like a stove and only when it is healthy, can energy spread out to the whole body evenly through blood vessels. If there is a lack of body heat, the whole body does not function properly and you cannot give birth to a child, he noted. 

Then he said that hot sand bath is the next best thing to insam, telling her that if she had a hot sand bath on the Sa (sand) riverside, it would surely work. 

The water from three valleys of Ryongthong, Soryong and Chongjisa converges to form the Sa River. It was named thus as it is a stream with particularly large areas of sand. Sand beach stretches for miles from the north to the south along the river stream. 

Surprisingly, the wife gave birth to a baby boy exactly ten months after she took a hot sand bath and two more baby boys in a few years afterwards. 

She was so glad that she told every women she met that hot sand bath is the next best to insam. As the word “next to sam”, or sam daum in Korean, was on every woman’s lips, the pronunciation gradually changed and it was finally pronounced as “samdaem” or “samdaemi”. 

Medicinal effects of samdaem sand bath

Samdaem sand contains a large amount of various substances such as magnesium, iron, copper, silicon, manganese and calcium. 

The sand bath helps treat various diseases by making use of the thermic effect of sand heated by sunlight and the interaction between radon, a radioactive gas emitted from underground and its decay product. 

Medical workers scientifically proved that the main treatment effect of the samdaem sand bath is produced by radon gas. 

Radon is well absorbed into the human body through contact with the skin and inhalation, acts favourably on the nervous, cardiovascular, metabolic, endocrine, hematopoietic and digestive systems and plays a role in healing inflammation fast by improving the adaptability of skin. 

There is a nice treatment base at the samdaem sand bath resort in Kaesong. 

According to its official, Chairman Kim Jong Il gave detailed instructions that Kaesong City should build the resort like a sanatorium and use it for the medical care of the people. 

As it is now midsummer which is opportune for hot sand bath, many people come to the resort from across the country for medical treatment.