Lynnwood spa: Korean bathhouse comfort in blustery Northwest

Olympus Spa is the opposite of the cliche spa for the elite that charges over-the-top prices for beauty treatments.

Here — in Lynnwood and Tacoma and soon in Tukwila — women of even modest means can find health and rejuvenation.

Entry fees of $38 in Lynnwood and $35 in Tacoma buy them all-day admission to a variety of heated rooms designed in accordance with thousands of years of Eastern wisdom.

There’s a sea-salt room to detoxify the body and burn calories, a charcoal room to help cleanse the blood and lungs, a sand room to strengthen the cardiovascular system, a jade/mud room, meditation room and reading room. Hydrotherapy rooms include hot whirlpools to relieve stress and to soothe aching muscles and joints, a mugwort steam sauna and an herbal dry sauna.

“We really focus on restoring health,” said Sun Lee, 40, son of the spa’s founders and manager of the Lynnwood site.

It was their mother’s idea, said his brother, Tae Lee, 38, who manages the original spa in Tacoma and interpreted recently as his parents told their story.

The Lees left South Korea in 1990, when the boys were teenagers, and settled in Tacoma, near family. Prompted by the wet and windy Northwest winters that chilled her body and left her hands and feet perpetually cold, Young Lee, now 62, dreamed of the hot bath houses of her native Korea.

“Why don’t we start a spa like in Korea?” she asked her husband, Myong Lee, now 72.

Her husband embraced the idea and set about working to make it happen, importing materials like jade, Elvan stone and a purified charcoal made by burning wood of a special oak tree in a kiln for seven days.

Such materials can transmit deeply penetrating, therapeutic heat to the human body, Myong Lee said. When the stones, jade, sand, salt and charcoal are heated to certain temperatures, they emit far infrared rays and heat that Myong Lee says not only heats the body, but helps with healing.

Discovered by a German scientist through a spectroscope in the late 18th century, far infrared rays have been the subject of much study in recent years. Invisible to the naked eye, their effect on the body is like sunshine without the damaging ultraviolet rays. Regardless of modern studies, Koreans have been using the heat energy of far infrared rays for centuries — in stone crockery and pots that cook food readily without burning it, in the natural stone used to hold and transmit heat in steam baths and, perhaps most notably, in traditional heated floors, a concept that originated in Korea.

While the Lees were well aware of the warmth the far infrared ray generates, their quest to bring that warmth to Northwest women was not without obstacles. One partner didn’t see the vision and left the project. A bank also was skeptical and required the Lees to go through a lot of hoops, Myong Lee said.

But they persisted and, in 1997 — three years after beginning their quest — the Lees opened their first Olympus Spa in Tacoma. There are rooms for massages and body scrubs, rooms for a host of beauty treatments, including manicures and pedicures, facials, waxes and moisture treatment — all available for an additional charge — as well as the therapeutic heated rooms and pools. There is even a tea cafe and a restaurant featuring Korean dishes for both vegetarians and carnivores.

It didn’t take long for local women to embrace the Lees’ vision. In 1 1/2 years, the Tacoma site was making a profit. Soon it was getting crowded and customers were complaining about traffic and long travel times.

When research indicated “that 60 percent of customers were coming from Federal Way and north,” Tae Lee said, his parents started seeking a second site, eventually settling on Lynnwood.

Tucked away behind the Lynnwood Convention Center off 196th Street, the Lynnwood Olympus Spa’s exterior gives little indication of what’s inside. And the simple pleasures of gleaming wooden corridors edged by small white stones and bamboo plants, of darkened rooms with warm, canvas-covered floors of salt and sand, of hushed camaraderie in sauna, pool and lounging areas, is a secret known only to women. Nudity is required in the pools and men are not allowed beyond the front desk.

The Lees said they’ve considered opening a spa for men, but decided against it. Research shows 70 percent of spa clients are women, Sun Lee said.

Husbands can take comfort in knowing that pleasing their wives with the gift of a spa visit will also indirectly benefit them, he added.

It’s a philosophy embraced by the Lees, Myong Lee in particular.

“This spa is a family-owned business dedicated from a husband to his wife as a gift of honoring women,” states the Olympus Spa website.

Young Lee uses the Tacoma spa every day. Her circulation has improved and her hands and feet are no longer cold, she said, and she’s happy other Northwest women can enjoy the same healing.Visitors encouraged to write in a journal had similar remarks.

“I have released some of my burden here with a wonderful day spent with my beautifully spirited cousin — relaxing, talking, soaking and sweating out the toxins of everyday life,” wrote one woman. “This is such an amazing place and a true sanctuary.”

Myong Lee estimated 50 to 150 women visit the 6,500-square-foot Tacoma spa on any given day, with 100 to 300 at the 15,000-square-foot Lynnwood site, which started turning a profit only six months after opening about 10 years ago.

Now the Lees are in the design phase of a third Olympus Spa, expected to open in about two years in Tukwila, about two blocks behind the South Center Mall.

As profits have grown, so too have the family’s donations to charities, including to World Vision and to the Korean Millal Mission, to help support adults and children with disabilities around the world.

For the Lees, the spas was never just about the money, Tae Lee said.

“My parents’ highest priority was to promote women’s health,” he said.

Sun Lee agreed, explaining that the goal of Olympus Spa is to provide “an oasis, or haven, for women to really find a place to relax in the midst of their busy lives.”