The bather: A journey by water, with porridge and barley tea, through 9 Koreatown spas

The landscape of the Koreatown neighborhood of Los Angeles, a concrete universe of slightly less than three square miles in Mid-City, is a bilingual-signed jigsaw of strip malls and squat high-rises, barbecue restaurants and porridge joints. It’s about as far away from John Cheever’s Westchester…