Inside Singapore’s new Korean celebrity-favourite luxury confinement centre
DeRama’s facility here is its first overseas outpost
[SINGAPORE] Calling K-drama fans on the cusp of welcoming newborns – fancy receiving premium, Korean-style pampering after delivering your baby? Now you can.
DeRama, South Korea’s confinement centre that’s popular with top Korean celebrity couples, has just opened its first overseas outpost here. Spread across the entire 12th floor of the one-Michelin-Key hotel Artyzen, the 6,494-sq-ft facility is banking on both star power and a blend of Korean heritage and modern science to draw post-partum clients.
The idea for DeRama was conceived after co-founder and chief executive officer Kim Hyo’s older brother had a bad experience with a confinement centre when his first child was born.
Kim, a former Samsung executive, then joined forces with his anaesthesiologist wife and other obstetricians to start the original DeRama in May 2008. The eight-storey building in Seoul’s Gangnam district now has a loyal following, and its 24 guest rooms are fully booked till June.
“Singapore is in the heart of Asia and, as a market, has good potential for DeRama’s high-end services,” says Kim, whose wife and three children were all looked after at the centre post-delivery.
The Seoul facility, which also provides prenatal care and aesthetic treatments, has become quite the draw for a long list of Korean celebrity parents. These include Squid Games’ Lee Byung-hun, Boys Over Flowers’ Lee Min-jung, Crash Landing on You’s Hyun Bin and Son Ye-jin, as well as BigBang’s Taeyang and his wife, actress Min Hyo-rin.
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That accounts for many of the stars’ framed pictures lining the corridors of DeRama here, which aims to bring the same professional standards, therapeutic care and personalised services it offers in its South Korean flagship.
The Singapore version has eight suites for guests, two treatment rooms for massage therapies, a nursery and a lactation room. Fathers are welcome to stay, though their meals are charged separately.
A signature feature in every room is a Korean-imported sitz bath – a modern version of a traditional herbal steam bath that Korean mothers swear by. This specially designed warm and gentle bath for cleaning the perineal area is thought to assist with wound healing, pain reduction, blood circulation and infection prevention.
While the local outpost does not offer prenatal care or aesthetic treatments, it’s differentiating itself with what it calls trusted Korean postnatal wellness methods, which allow mummies to focus on rest and recuperation.
For starters, only registered and enrolled nurses are employed to care for the newborns, with each nurse looking after a maximum of three babies at any time. They are in turn trained by credentialled Korean registered nurses, who adapt the Korean centre’s protocols to the local context.
DeRama says the first two weeks after childbirth is the “golden time” for recovery, as the hormone relaxin remains highly active, and aids in the loosening and subsequent healing of ligaments, muscles and connective tissues.
Hence, its intensive massage programme targets muscle realignment, tissue recovery and restoring body shape. It claims this evidence-based approach is a key reason why Korean celebrities head to DeRama for post-partum care.
In addition, it also offers luxurious hair shampoos and treatments here, as well as its own range of facial masks, skincare products and baby wipes.
Meals are crafted by Korean nutritionists, prepared by Artyzen chefs and drawn from Korean, Western and traditional Chinese medicine philosophies.
DeRama’s first guest when it opened last month was a Korean, and enquiries have been coming from Singaporeans, Indonesians and Indians.
“We’ve been in the market for (many) years, focusing on high-end clients and VIPs,” says Kim. “And that’s a big difference, because we know in detail what they want and how to treat them.”
And the cost of Korean celebrity-style postnatal treatment? A two-week stay in a regular suite will set you back S$35,000, and a garden terrace suite will cost S$50,000.
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