A South Korean hotel is offering guests the exact opposite of an escape, serving up incarceration in a cell that spans just 5 square-metres.
Guests – or should that be inmates – check into the ‘Prison Inside Me’ hotel in Hongcheon, 80km north-east of Seoul, not for spa treatments, fine dining or long lie-ins…but to sample what it’s like to be banged up.
Founded over a decade ago by former lawyer, Kwon Yong-Seok, and his wife, the hotel’s raison d’etre is to let people experience life minus everyday comforts which, they say, allows them to get more in touch with themselves.
When guests, who pay around £100-a-night to check in, arrive they’re greeted with the kind of cell that a criminal held at His Majesty’s Pleasure might find themselves locked up in.
Banish thoughts of a comfortable bed too, there’s a simple mat on the cell’s floor, alongside a small desk and a toilet.
Mobile phones are banned, there’s no way of telling the time and even basic vanity is off the menu, with no mirrors in the cells.
Dinner – a basic affair – arrives via a hole in the door, just as it would in some of Britain’s high security prisons.
The order of the day once the key is turned and guests have just themselves for company is self-reflection – with meditation, diary writing and some simple yoga encouraged.
Locked up: Guests pay around £100-a-night to check into Prison Inside Me, a hotel that operates like a prison in Hongcheon, 80km north-east of Seoul
The hotel was opened in 2013 by ex lawyer Kwon Yong-Seok who said he wanted to offer guests – mostly stressed out South Koreans – an experience that would let them step off the treadmill
Conversation is limited too but those checking in, mostly South Koreans looking for a unique digital detox, say they enjoy the prison experience.
The Prison Inside Me, they claim, offers the chance to leave the pressures of society and work behind for a night or two – in the way a monastery retreat might.
Founder Kwon Yong-seok initially spent around 2 billion Korean won – around £1 million – setting up the ‘spiritual’ facility after he became fascinated by the idea that a burst of solitary confinement could be good for people’s mental health, having worked 100-hour weeks himself.
The ex lawyer said when the hotel opened in 2013: ‘I didn’t know how to stop working back then.
‘I felt like I was being swept away against my will, and it seemed I couldn’t control my own life.’
He added: ‘I only hope that this place offers a chance for visitors to reflect on themselves.
‘I sometimes walk backwards so that I can see the road I’ve just walked. People rarely do so and only think about roads ahead. I think we need to try to look back.’
Inside the jail-themed hotel; ‘prisoners’ reside in a single cell that measures just 5 square metres
Cells are sparsely furnished, with just a mat on the floor for a bed and simple furniture
And guests must give up their cell phones – although they are allowed to check for important messages once a day
On the other side of the world, a holidaymaker in Benidorm claimed to have a similar experience with a stay in a hotel that, he claimed, resembled a high-security prison.
Grumet, an influencer who shares videos of his antics in Alicante, booked himself into serviced apartments which promise families, ‘sunshine terraces, a rooftop pool, gym, hot tub and sauna’ just moments from Levante Beach and Benidorm’s Old Town.
His experience in an apartment on the Costa Blanca that was billed as ‘fantastic for families’ featured broken blinds, cramped rooms and interior balconies reminiscent of one of Europe’s less-salubrious jails.
Dubbed ‘HMP Benidorm’, the clip shows the entrance with parallel white indoor balconies – complete with metal bars on the rooms.
The hotel, Apartamentos Avenida, costs around £50 a night in the winter for a four-person room, going up to £116 in August. It is advertised as ‘fantastic for families with small children’ and ‘comfortable’ on Booking.com.
Grumet said: ‘I wouldn’t stay here again. I’ve not been to prison, but I’ve seen TV programmes and this was no different.’
He filmed guests standing on the indoor balconies jokingly asking them ‘what you in prison for?’
One man responded ‘for using a Fire Stick and watching the football.’
The influencer, who has 316,000 followers, jokingly sighed: ‘The system’s a joke.’
The video also featured his dimly-lit room, which he referred to as a ‘cell’, which had broken blinds, a ’47-year-old’ landline and no ‘old town’ view.
He also claimed to have a panic alarm in his room, which he set off to trigger an apparently building-wide alert. It is unclear if the alarm was real.
‘The landing stood out the most. As soon as I saw it, I said this isn’t an apartment, it’s a prison. I nicknamed it HMP Benidorm’.
