Fan Death: Korean Urban Legend Gone Mad
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Best urban legend ever: Koreans of all ages and levels of education believe that if you sleep in a room with an electric fan and without the windows and doors open, you will die.
My girlfriend is currently working as an English teacher in South Korea. She just IM'd me about Fan Death: the Korean belief that if someone is sleeping in a sealed room (windows and doors are closed) with an electric fan on, they will die.
This isn't some hokey story - apparently every Korean, from every strata of society, believes it. There is the excellent site www.fandeath.net which has been set up to examine this bizarre phenomenon amongst one of the most technologically adept nations on this earth. As the site says:
"The only country to believe in fan death is South Korea. If you ask any Korean about fan death, they will almost certainly vehemently argue that it is indeed true. It seems Koreans of all ages, professions (including doctors) and education backgrounds believe it.
Koreans use the media as proof. Newspapers and TV continually attribute deaths to fans.
If you approach a Korean about this issue, their first instinct is to defend their culture to foreigners even though they may not agree with the belief themselves. I will commend anyone on their effort to convince a Korean that fan death may not be true, but I think it would be a very difficult task. Even if they did believe you, I still secretly believe they would turn off the fan, or make sure the window or door was open, when they went to bed."
I love that last bit.
Other Travelhappy posts of interest:
- South Korea: Gaming The Future
- Spam Giftset, South Korea
- Travels In North Korea
- Teaching English In Korea
- A Year In Pyongyang
