In the best bathrooms, framed landscape paintings hang above urinals. A recording of twittering birds echoes off marble floors. In the women's, an optional device called the ''etiquette bell'' plays a flushing sound, veiling more unseemly noises.
Toilets are a place for repose as well as relief, city hall says.
But municipal officials seem more thrilled by their 16 new public bathrooms, the nine to be built and the 587 renovated ones. The gem of Suwon restrooms lies across the street from a reservoir, a white, winged, pillbox-shaped structure that resembles a futuristic dwelling in a science fiction film. Outside, three bulbous-eyed sculptures of fireflies cling to a wall above a bed of yellow flowers. Inside, flecks in the marble floor sparkle, supposedly mimicking the insects' nightly flash. Visitors can sit on a circular bench beneath a potted bougainvillaea in Encounter Plaza, an inner courtyard filled with paintings on sale and a couple of vending machines.