In the Hankyoreh Shinmun, Dankook University Medical School professor and regular health columnist Seo Min attempts to answer the question we’ve all been wondering: Can you really die from falling asleep with your fan on and your windows closed?
In summer, there are usually at least a few news reports of “fan death.” Granted, with this year’s summer being relatively cool, there were fewer reports of people dying after they fell asleep with their fans on.
Seo said doctors explain the phenomenon thusly. Firstly, there is the hypothermia theory/rumor. The fan lowers your body temperature, and severe hypothermia can cause heart attacks. It’s questionable, however, whether a fan could substantially lower your body temperature, especially during the hot and humid summer. Secondly, there is the suffocation theory/rumor, to wit, the wind produced by the fan causes asphyxiation. This, too, is very doubtful, he said. If a strong wind could suffocate you, how is it that people driving convertibles don’t die at the wheel?
So, Seo asks, does the fan really kill people? In fact, he wonders how is it that he’s managed to survive so far when he goes to sleep each night with the fan turned on high. And with the fan aimed at his face and the window frequently closed to boot!
The thing that really piqued his suspicions, however, was that reports of “fan death” can be found only in Korea. It’s not like Korea’s air is any less oxygen rich, and Korean fans aren’t especially powerful. But you even have doctors repeatedly pronouncing “death by fan.” Is there nobody, he cries, who has conducted research on this killer that claims a dozen or so lives each year?
So, what to make of all the tales of unfortunate souls claimed by the fan scourge. Seo believes them to be the product of an urban legend. And people have a tendency to judge things according to what they already believe. For example, in areas with cholera, it’s easy to misdiagnose someone with the runs after eating too much ice cream as infected with cholera. Likewise, when you have a person who has died in a a closed space and there just so happened to be a fan pointed at his head, it’s easier to to pin the blame on the fan rather than look for other causes, especially in a country where there’s a preexisting belief in killer fans.
In fact, if doctors strove instead to find the real causes of death of the victims of “fan death,” they’d find a large number of the fatalities were due to causes other than the fan, including heart attacks and strokes.
Seo noted that he’s never seen a warning label on a fan cautioning buyers from leaving it on as they sleep, nor has he seen a court award a victim’s family for “fan death.” All this indicated that neither the appliance makers or the victims really believe in death by fan. So, he concludes, the media should stop promoting this mistaken believe with their “fan death reports,” and doctors need to find the real causes of death rather than chalking things of to “fan death.”
73 Comments
I have no idea what the status is of this “urban legend” in Korea, but it is based in a large amount of truth: people think a fan will make them cooler and put it in the window during the middle of the day. Instead, it brings hot air into the room and heats the room, while giving the illusion to the resident that it is cooling the air because the air rushes past the individual, evaporating the moisture (sweat) on the surface of the skin and temporarily cooling the body. However, the ultimate result of heating the room is that the elderly and others in a weakened physical state fall victim to heat strokes, heart attacks, and other medical conditions that damage their frail bodies and can cause death. That’s the truth about so-called “fan death” — and no, I’m not just blowing a lot of hot air.
In the mid ’70’s when I was a Peace Corps Volunteer here, I first encountered these stories of fan deaths. Having studied in Japan a few years prior, while living with Japanese families, prior to common airconditioning of Japanese homes, we all slept with fans running during the summer evenings. I was really bewildered when I came across Koreans — including my new wife — cautioning me about the perils of fan death.
The Korea Herald or Korea Times (I forget which) published a couple of my letters. The least popular was the one in which I satirized fan deaths.
Anyway, I’m a bit amazed this nonsense continue 30 years later. I guess good bullshit never disappears — it only fertilizes the next generation.
I’m not sure if it changes anything, but in Korea, they don’t use the big square-shaped fans you stick in the window, but rather (usually) small rotating fans. BTW, congratulations—you’re the first non-Korean I’ve read to offer a defense of Fan Death.
Wow, he’s a Brave Korean, to say that in public… about time somebody besides the foreigners did!
(i have myself been accused of being “anti-Korean” for ridiculing Fan Death… lots of us have…)
You’ll laugh — until that fateful 17″ blade blows the air that takes your life.
Curzon’s theory is indeed false, because the common Korean Fan Death theory requires that all windows be tightly closed — thus some have told me that maybe the fans emit / increase CO2, and thus…
That should be “piqued”.
On another note, what is the deal with the angry North Korean women’s soccer team in Adelaide yesterday? I didn’t even know they had a women’s team fielding regular international events.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/.....55610.html
“Seo Min” writes a piece like that? Gotta be a pseudonym.
Sanshin: My “theory” as you call it is plain fact. I’m living in NYC right now, and you always read of some illiterate Polish great grandmother in Queens who died of “fan death” for putting on the fan when it’s 104F outside and thinking it will cool her off. Then she suffers heart failure and dies because her room is like a Swedish sauna. Go figure.
Certainly any idea that may exist in your corner of the world that fan death is caused by sucking the O2 out of the room or something is nonsense on its face. I could have told you that in 3rd grade. But then, all Koreans are crazy.
Fan death is indeed a reality. I have seen it myself.
Upon first coming to Seoul, I lived in a rather small place with little to no natural air flow. In the heart of the hot and humid summer, not 1, but 2 fans died due to leaving them on 24/7.
Fan death is a reality.
Stupid people believe stupid shit fed to them by morons. Case closed.
Curzon, pay attention to what the Marmot said. Fan death in Korea occurs with rotating fans, not box window fans. And, fan death occurs when all the windows are closed.
Thus, the word in Korea is that you should always have a window open when you use a fan.
Personally, I have never seen fan death. The only fan death I saw was reported mostly during summer times on tv news in South Korea. Even though South Korean tv news is strongly influenced by government propaganda, the govt has nothing to gain by publishing non existant news about fan death.
However and whatever the explanation is, fan death occurs only with all windows closed, with the fan going, and the person deep asleep.
I’m not sure if Robert Koehler is addressing me in saying that I defend fan deaths. I don’t. I have been an unabashed sceptic for 30 years - much to the chagrin of my Korean friends and in-laws.
Fortunately over time, one branch of my in-laws has became a group of phsicians and the current explanation they offer is that people often die in their sleep, in summer - and sometimes the fan is running - but there is no connection.
Also, while there are box fans in Japan, there are rotating fans, too. In fact with with a mini power transformer, the Sanyo we brought over from Tokyo almost six years ago after a couple of years of use there, out performs the local fans in terms of performance and quietness.
And, for your information, the Sanyo fan has never killed a soul in all these years of summer nighttime use!
Mr. Coyner: I was addressing Curzon. Sorry, I should have made that clear.
So, where’s that “Fan Death” horror movie?
i heard that fan death was just an honorable cover-up for suicide… anybody else hear that theory?
It’s been years since I had a Korean fan, but they used to have timers on them, and there was no always-on option–I do not recall the export versions of them having the same type of timer. That, and of course the fan death myth, led me to believe that “someone” decided that petroleum-deficient Korea did not need people forgetting to turn them off or running fans at night when everyone was sleeping soundly. The dollars and cents make sense. Were I to subscribe to loony conspiracy theories, I’d state that exporting always-on fans was cunning plan to off all of us.
Yeah, I’ve heard that too. Along with copious amounts of booze.
Ahhh, the fan death. Recently a fellow poster and I were remembering that terrible summer of 1995. It was totally new to me such heat at humdiity. When my students asked me the loaded question (one of many!) “Do you sleep with the fan on?” they were terribly concerned about my well being. “You’ll die in your sleep! Please stop!”
Anyway, the best explaination I have ever hear came from a Korean friend who worked for KEPCO. He did not believe in fan death (but of course could not say that!) but told me that the myth was spread by the Park Chung-hee government while Korea was electrifing in order to conserve electricity. Remember, 30 years ago much of South Korea still did not have electricity.
Tangential to what Seouldout and Kimchipig wrote, I read somewhere recently one theory that the myth spread in order to tactfully (!?) discourage overnight guests from leaving the fan on all night and running up the power bill…tactfully, insofar as expressing concern about the guest’s longevity is better than saying outright, “Don’t leave the fan on and run up my bill!”
Getting back to the original post, this Mr. Seo Min certainly has balls if he’s going to publish a story debunking fan death—in the we’re-all-one-big-happy-minjok Hankyoreh, no less!
There’s always a logical explanation for the origins of such unusual phenomenon. It usually coincides with a certain huge change or development in that society.
For example, prior to the 1940-50s, there is no record of people in the United States getting abducted by UFOs or space aliens. After the 1950s, there is a tremendous surge in reporting about alien abductions, close encounters, and other paranormal phenomenon. So what happened during this time?
One asks why fan death is uniquely common in Korea?
Well, why do UFO abductions seem to happen only in “advanced” countries, that just happen to have a space program or a vigorous military-industrial complex? Underdeveloped countries seem to be largely immune from such incidences. Why do UFO abductions seem to invariably happen to White people only? I have never heard of a Black person being abducted by aliens. Why do incidences of such abduction always seem to have a strange sexual element involved, like anal probes or whatnot?
These are all mysteries of our modern time.
I heard once (not in Korea) that fan death was a common belief in Japan at one time. In Korea it might derive from memories of carbon monoxide poisoning in rooms with poorly sealed ondol floors. Or maybe not.
Anyway, on the subject of UFO abductions, one of the first reported experiences was by an African American man, Barney Hill, in 1961. His Caucasian wife Betty shared in the experience, whatever it was, or wasn’t.
I will bet anybody…anybody $10,000 that I can sleep in a room with all the doors and windows closed and a LARGE fan blowing straight on my face for 30 days. If I die of “Fan Death” you win, if I don’t then I get to buy a new AC for my apartment with several Ks left over for a new flat screen LCD HDTV.
Any true “Fan Death” advocates out there want to put ther money where their beliefs are?
I need to make one caveat. I meant that I will sleep every night for 8 hours with the door and windows closed and a big fan blowing on me for at least 8 hours every night for 30 days. There has to be somebody out there that will take my bet.
Why do crop circles only happen in England? Why do people believe that there is a monster living in a lake in Scotland? Why do people believe that there was a technologically advanced civilization somewhere in the Mediterranean 4000 years ago that disappeared in one night and? Why do some people take Scientology so seriously? Why do lots of people believe in the mystical healing powers of crystals and other New Age mumbo-jumbo? Why do people believe in mysteriously bleeding religious statues? Why do some Beetles fanatics think that they can hear John Lennon’s voice speaking from the dead if they play the record backwards? Why does an old, blue-haired lady from somewhere in Kentucky think she saw a cloud shaped like Elvis’s head?
Fan death is the least of out worries.
(Oops. Post didn’t go through.)
It’s unlikely that the Park Administration would have spread the idea of fan death to encourage conservation of electricity. After all, Park would have just outlawed using fans at night and killed anyone who disagreed.
Back in 1997 I sent this item to Ask Cecil, a trivia column par excellence, and Cecil came up with these passing observations:
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a970912.html
But what I’ve read here (e.g. the electricity-saving corollary)certainly indicates that the problem is not so easily or completely explained.
A friend has yet a third theory for the appearance of fan death items in the news: to cover up embarrassing causes of death, such as auto-erotic asphyxiation, etc. While admittedly it doesn’t ring as true as the theory involving government propoganda to save electricity, it certainly does have the added element of face-saving that we all know is alive and well here in the republic.
I recently showed the Ask Cecil article to my advanced students in a reading/topic discussion class and overall the response was rather hostile (as in ‘you’re attacking Korea and we know it’)- and I observed that 35% went with Cecil’s heat stroke theory, but the majority (65%) held sway with the traditional ‘vacuum over the mouth’ theory. Still, a positive improvement over the 95% of vacuum theory supporters in 97 when I sent the initial query to Cecil.
A pity I didn’t know about the Hankyoreh article; criticism of things Korean, even urban legends, is so much more welcome from one of their own. I predict the day will come when young people will refuse to believe that a majority of their fellow countrymen believed in such a thing. E.G., not only will they lose their steel grip on this belief, but they will completely eradicate it from the collective memory….
Also, Kudos for the Japanese CO theory and the UFO analogy; although I must also differ with the idea that UFO mania happens only in countries with space programs, etc… I think I remember there being substantial followings in the Phillipines and certain parts of South America, such as Argentina and Brazil.
And yes, there are a lot of mumbo-jumbo beliefs and even movements out there, and the power of denial is certainly not to be discounted. While we’re on the subject, does anybody have any links to the Moonies in Korea? Awfully low-key, at least if you don’t speak Korean perfectly - but Koreans I’ve asked have said the most outlandish things, such as “I heard they have naked orgies all the time”. Has anyone ever witnessed a stadium mass-wedding?
I think the fan death myth was started by old people. By “old people”, I mean folks of my grandparent’s generation, those who lived through the occupation, the 6-25 war, and the period when household appliances started becoming commonplace for the first time.
There seemed to have been some kind of unspoken general principle in pre-modern Korean tradition that suggested “HOT=GOOD COLD=BAD”, which applied itself to everyday, common things. For example, when a child had fever, common practice in elder times was to make the child “even hotter” by bundling the kid up with more clothing. Seems counter-intuitive to us today, but it made some kind of sense in those days. Even today, you witness old people declaring “shi-heeuuun-nada” with a contented sigh after having a bowl of steaming, hot chigae in the middle of summer. Many Korean restaurants do not provide iced water as a matter of course even though the weather demands such service as an obvious necessity.
Now these are some aspects specific to Korea.
Actually, in general, old people do not like ACs or anything that causes cold air to blow around them. You’d find old ladies wearing sweaters even in the middle of a heat wave.
A newfangled device like the sumpoom-gi may have been regarded with a degree of suspicion during the immediate, post-war years. The frickin thing even looks dangerous, with its high-speed rotating blades. What if a stupid child stuck his fingers between the grilling when the parent wasnt looking?
Zonath: good point about Park Chung Hee.
Bluejives: I remember learning that when steam trains were first introduced in England in the early 19th century, there were all kinds of unfounded fears around them…like that a pregnant woman riding one would have a miscarriage; etc. (Surely the stagecoaches of the day, trundling down bumpy dirt, gravel, or macadamized roads would have been a greater threat in that situation than a train clickety-clacking down iron rails!)
It could all be hearsay or idle speculation, but if you go to the Wikipedia discussion page for “Fan death,” according to two commentators there, the idea may have spread to Japan and China. For some reason—according to one anonymous commenter, so take it with a grain of salt—some Chinese people say that they know it’s a problem because they’ve heard that many Japanese people (not other Chinese people or Koreans) die from leaving the fan on. Even if it started out by having some grounding in truth, by the time we get to citizens of country x having a belief from country y based on what they heard happened in country z, that’s getting pretty urban-legendy….
Okay, here’s my theory on this whole mess. I believe it is an urban legend for unexplained deaths in South Korea but it could have some basis in fact although not the one that some of you think.
Fans were introduced to Korea by the Japanese during the occupation in the early 20th century. At first only the elite had them so there were no real reported cases of someone dying. However, as the common people got this new and wonderous device in their abodes (as well as the electricity needed to run them) certain deaths which had no other explanation were probably blamed on the fans for superstitious reasons. I think that part of the reason was the poor ventilation in the typical Korean houses and the fact that charcoal or wood was used to cook and heat the house. Even as late as the 1980’s there were still houses around that did not have the steam driven floor heating system common today. Also, any of us who’ve had Korean wives know that the floor heating system is sometimes used during rainy season to take the dampness out of the house. I’m sure that even in the old days this was done and when it was the build up of carbon monoxide in the house combined with the fans to push it around in a closed room during a chilly rainy season evening probably made fan death a household name in Korea.
I know there are lots of holes in my theory but it’s the only one I’ve been able to come up with that might be based in any truth whatsoever. That’s my two cents.
Tim in Angeles sendzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Well, certainly carbon monoxide poisoning has traditionally been a problem in Korea, in homes with traditional ondol heating and cracks in the linoleum…I guess the question would be, is CO poisoning commonly cited as a cause of death? (Maybe not so much these days, since as Excorling/Tim in Angeles points out, means other than burning yŏnt’an are generally used for heating today.)
My mid-90s Lonely Planet guidebook certainly warned of the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning; fortunately, I’ve never slept overnight in the kind of house where I would have had to worry about it.
…Oh, and those irresponsible LP authors didn’t mention anything about leaving a fan on overnight!
Difference being jives, is that we’re not talking about old blue-haired ladies, overexcited Beatles fans, new-age morons, religious nutjobs, or retarded UFO conspiracy freaks. They’re all well known idiots, and are not given the responsibility of being government-funded sources of information for the public. The fan death myth is routinely and repeatedly reported as fact by every major Korean media outlet in existence.
You don’t see Katty Kay on the BBC telling viewers that the Loch Ness Monster really exists. You don’t see Anderson Cooper on CNN saying that Alien abductions are fact. Nor do you see Brian Williams on NBC informing the public that Atlantis was real.
You do, on the other hand, regularly see major Korean media sources reporting an absolutely bullshit piece of fantasy medical mumbo jumbo myth as FACT. See the difference, knee-jerk boy?
Of course you don’t.
Interesting that the fact of carbon monoxide poisoning from Korean ondol heating system doesn’t generate the same worry as the myth of fan death. Granted most are on city gas now, but when I first arrived here many still used charcoal yontan. Oh the anger I encountered when I mentioned that the heating system was more dangerous than a fan. You would thought I said the Japanese invented kimchi.
Bluejives mentioned that he’s never heard of a black person abducted by aliens. Here’s one: Riley Martin. He’s the author of the The Coming of Tan and hosts a radio show on one of Howard Stern’s Sirius channels. Here’s one of his recent shows: http://www.bigupload.com/d=073621CD
if you’ve been to hot and humid manila, there are people who sleep in rooms without windows… and they use fans for cooling systems, but i’ve never heard of anybody dying because of this… this urban legend must have been started by aircondition companies…
If the room has to be sealed, let me suggest another reason - before electricity, people used fans powered by kerosene burners, which heated a stirling engine to power the fan. These were quite common in Asia back in the first half of the 20th century.
So a few people die from CO poisoning using kerosene powered fans, and the idea perpetuates itself even when fans are changed over to electric operation…
http://www.geocities.com/~rric.....breezy.htm
(for a modern design)
Bbarrick, I think I’ll take you up on the $10k bet, if you use Nick’s kerosene fan.
Echoing iheartblueballs, the difference between say those who believe in crop circles or Elvis sightings is that the vast majority of the other people in the nation think those who believe are kooks. Tom Cruise (Scientology) is a total nutjob.
In Korea many will actually almost come to blows over trying to prove fan death is real. Most people believe it and think you’re stupid if you don’t. Finally that’s changing, and about time. I have a memorable conversation with an SNU PhD who showed me his ‘proof,’ which was KBS article! I’ve even read a few ‘scholarly’ articles by other Korean PhDs trying to prove fan death.
A better analogy for high number of people believing in fan death may be people in many countries (including Korea) believing that being cold can cause oneself to get a cold or, up until recently, that most ulcers are caused by stress, spicy food, or alcohol.
I’m going to second the Park Chun Hee electricty usage minimization theory. I’ve heard that before.
More recently someone floated the idea that air con will make you sick. I talked to a guy at work last summer who complained about not getting any sleep because he had been too hot. I noted that I had slept quite well, on account of my A/C being turned on. He said he had A/C but didn’t use it because it would make him sick. Ooooookaaaaaay.
OK, I had no idea that fan death could taken so seriously in Korea. I have always been of the impression that it was understood as a mild superstition. It was certainly never a belief in my family; my parents slept with their fans on during hot evenings. I did. None of my Korean friends or anyone ever talked about fan death.
I just had some difficulty believing that this thing was really that big a deal like you guys seemed to make it to be because I thought you were just fishing for yet another reason to bash Koreans, because well, that’s what a lot of you guys do.
But if certain doctors and PhDs are using fan death as an accepted medical explanation, then that’s totally unacceptable. That is irresponsible and possibly unethical.
BTW, I always been a bit puzzled about second-hand smoke being more dangerous to an adjacent non-smoker than to the smoker himself. Granted smoking is bad, period, but that is not my point. How is that possible? It seems a bit counterintuitive to me. I mean, is that an empirically established fact or something that was made up by the anti-smoking lobby to discourage smokers? Granted, it was for a positive end but there is a difference between good intentions and the truth.
Is that Thai?
Fan death is the perfect cover for murder. Think about it: You poison someone, put him on his yo, close the window, point a fan at the poor bastard, and then shut the door. CSI Seoul comes out the next morning and quickly pronounces it another tragic fan death. No need for a toxicology test.
Did anyone see that great movie some enterprising folks put out called “Fan Death?” I caught it at Big Electric Cat last year. It used an America’s Most Wanted format with the Robert Stack character searching for the killer fan. Classic stuff.
Perfume Death in an elevator is, as many hip young Koreans like to say, “Fa-Real Yo!”
Bluejives check out The Coming of Tan.
I wrote an article about death by fan while working for the JoongAng Daily in 2004. The people I interviewed said basically what Mr. Min does.
Fan death is obviously bollocks. Contra one commenter, it is much more pressing than UFO believers, because if one happens to be married to a Korean, one quickly discovers the unique joys of sleeping in one’s sweat because A/C and fans are prohibited. Fortunately, my own wife has come round, although she still has a much greater tolerance for heat than I do, alas.
By the way, a long time ago I used to use a box fan in the window, and blow the air out of my room. It sort of seemed to work.
Don’t forget the </blockquote> next time…
Actually, I’ve heard that if you go a long enough time without cleaning the filter, some nasty types of mold and bacteria can grow in there. Not sure if I believe that mind you, but I still clean my filter fairly regularly — makes the air conditioner run better, if nothing else.
I’ve been puzzled by that one for awhile, myself… Maybe it’s because the smoker is already smoking, and so already has a statistically heightened chance of getting some form of rot-your-guts-out disease, so a little extra smoke isn’t going to go a whole lot further towards that end. On the other hand, a non-smoker who breathes secondhand smoke has a greatly enhanced chance of getting an aforementioned disease (compared to, say, someone who never goes near smokers — like an Amish person) — much more so than the smoker. So, secondhand smoke is worse for the non-smoker sitting next to the smoker? I suppose I could Google it, but I’m drunk and lazy right now.
http://www.fandeath.net/index.htm
http://joongangdaily.joins.com.....09101.html
Believing a fan can kill you is of course ridiculous. I first heard about fan death on my first trip to Korea in 1988 but it got its start much earlier than that. Anyway, this is what one of my educated Korean friends told me: Note: (back in the ’80’s, not so many Koreans had higher education like they do today).
He said that the ROK government started the rumor in the 1960’s to direct attention away from the real culprit which was the old coal heating system that Korea relied on for decades to heat their homes and water. These coal briquettes gave off noxious fumes and older or poorly constructed homes often had leaky pipes which would cause the dangerous fumes to seep into the household. Rather than scare the entire population (most of whom were living in said crappy homes at the time when the government started the rumor), they instead blamed many deaths from the noxious gases on fans because only the wealthy had fans at the time and this would not cause alarm with the general populace. Korea at the time did not have the resources to improve their infrastructure so it was easier and cheaper to blame the deaths being caused by ondol briquettes on fans instead which few people could afford anyway.
This has over time become accepted as the truth in Korean society and it will probably continue to do so. I can’t see the Korean government coming out today and admitting they started a false rumor and didn’t warn people of the real danger just so they wouldn’t cause a panic over their outdated infrastructure back in the ’60’s. It’s much easier for the Koreans to continue to adhere to the stupid belief they have created for themselves. To do otherwise would be embarrassing and shameful.
Now all of this could be pure BS…but my Korean friend who told me all of this did work for the ROK government and he was very quick to answer in detail when I posed the question to him about fan death. Take it as you will.
fascinating. Interesting. AC makes people sick. Fan can kill you in your sleep. Both ideas came from the 9pm news that is broadcasted for the South Korean population, every single night.
Two questions: Koreans were living in homes w/ CO-leaking heating pipes prior to the introduction of fans, so I’ll assume folks were dying. What household item was blamed for killing the “old man” then? And why were rooms heated in the summer?
A comment: It always seems the “old man” is in the killer fan’s sights. If it is indeed CO poisoning, someone ought to talk to the daughter-in-law to find out why she was heating the house in August.
And a warning: The rainy season has finished. The heat is upon us. Ya’ll be careful with them killin’ contraptions, ya hear.
Zonath said: “Actually, I’ve heard that if you go a long enough time without cleaning the filter, some nasty types of mold and bacteria can grow in there.”
Sure, there’s some truth to that and you’re right that cleaning the filters is a good idea for efficiency reasons as well. However, to let this fear keep you from using A/C to get a good night’s sleep is ridiculous.
And if I can continue beating a dead horse here, there’s also the idea that you need to leave the window open a crack when using A/C. I still don’t get that–if it really makes you sick, having 20% fresh air in the room or car is not going to stop that from happening.
Wedge and others: well, air-conditioning CAN actually
“make you sick” if used excessively, it’s well-known and
well-documented — AC air is very dry, and too much of
it, like when you’re sleeping and don’t notice, will dry
out the mucous membranes in your nose and mouth, and you
will much more easily get infected by common cold viruses.
It’s common knowledge that people catch colds very commonly and easily during or just after long airplane flights, and many studies have shown that it’s because of this factor — the very low-humidity and recycled air.
I’ve experienced this myself from home AC use and working in offices where the AC is turned up too high; most of us have, probably. It’s fine to use AC at night to help you sleep comfortably; i do; but just leave it turned up too high…
Fan deaths are for real. If it is on Korean television, it is scientifically proven. Full stop, case closed. So get yourselves a bamboo wife and stay safe out there! Keep the faith mr Marmot!
Seouldout…
The ondol was used to heat water too so they were used in the summer. I wasn’t trying to convince anyone of my point of view. I was merely relaying what was told to me by a ROK government employee. I even asked him how they could blame fans for killing poor people that probably didn’t even own a fan and he said Korean people have a tendancy to believe what is on the news and TV no matter how illogical the story might be. They even blamed fans for deaths that occured in the middle of winter but the public still believed the stories. Over the years, constant reiteration of fan death has worked like Pavlov’s dog on Koreans. No amount of rational discussion even with the most highly educated Korean can dissuade them from this conditioned reflex on fan death.
If you think about it, nothing is more illogical than a fan killing someone. But noxious fumes leaking into houses does make sense. Especially when the fumes hover low and Koreans used to all sleep on the floor.
Like I said, take it with a grain of salt. Be Pavlov’s dog if you want to be. I have no desire to pull an ostrich’s head out of the dirt.
CO poisoning makes some sense. So does conserving electricity and the reducing the outflow of precious dollars–this one I subscribe to. And the kerosene-powered fan is a new one.
On reflection I really do like the Koreans’ resolute belief in killer fans. It’s just so loopy. It’s a myth I’d like to see endure. Heck, I’d rather Korea be known internationally for it, i.e. the hub of killer fans, than the IT powerhouse it purports to be. And trust me, this is a story that entertains so many outside Korea.
I’m thinking of other deadly appliances I shall warn Koreans about.
“Rather than scare the entire population (most of whom were living in said crappy homes at the time when the government started the rumor), they instead blamed many deaths from the noxious gases on fans because only the wealthy had fans at the time and this would not cause alarm with the general populace”
This is nonsense. Just because some Korean told you that is the case, doesn’t make it so. Some Korean who tells nonsense can be just as ill informed as those who believe in fan death.
The fact of the matter is, it was well known in Korea by the 1970’s the leaking ondol cracks can kill. There are high profile newspaper articles of that time. I know, because I have them.
Besides, how did you know about Korea’s cracked ondol problem? Because you read about them in the Korean newspapers.
I think also this is a myth. I have been warned by my Korean friends about it in the past. I wonder how the aircon factors into things? I’m too cheap to buy an aircon for my bedroom in my Seoul apartment, so I’ll run the only aircon in the living room, leave my bedroom door open, and have the fan in the doorway. I think many of my Korean friends have told me similar stories, so I need to ask some more pointed questions about fan-death and air conditioner use.
One note, where I’m from in Southeast USA, almost every home has ceiling fans, certainly in the bedrooms. Wonder if those are used any in Korea?
Now, one factor I haven’t read in the comments… what about snoring or sleep apnea? Is there any chance that a direct breeze worsens or lessens these sleep problems? Just curious.
Anyway, interesting topic.
-Chris “The Stumbler”
Let’s try to turn that big blockquote off from comments 57 to 63…
(Hope that worked….)
Okay, try a new post… Stumbler raises some interesting questions…anybody care to try answering them?
I discussed this topic with my father this weekend. He said that enough incidents happen from time to time in Korea that makes it difficult to dismiss or ignore the possibility of fan death.
He also said something which make me think Stumbler might be on to something. My father claims that having the fan on “high blast” issuing a “direct breeze” for a “prolonged time period” caused his face to swell up considerably, upon awakening.
Key phrases: high blast, direct breeze, prolonged time period
Koreans believe in fan death because they’ve received a high blast of stupidity from the media for years on end. It’s been a direct breeze of lazy, pseudo-scientific bullshit from people that are either knowingly misleading the public, are too lazy to find out the true causes of death, or are too stupid to care.
When you put fan death in the context of other ridiculous, widespread beliefs among Koreans — fortune tellers, psychics, superstitions, SARS and cancer-curing kimchi, animal parts as aphrodisiacs, four seasons — it makes perfect sense. A culture that doesn’t value skepticism, and instead values blind loyalty and unquestioning belief in anything their “seniors” (or media) tell them over a prolonged time period, is bound to be awash in horseshit and fantasyland masquerading as common sense.
key phrases: high blast, direct breeze, prolonged time period, horseshit
By the way jives, you may want to inform your father that his logic is faulty. He apparently isn’t drawing a distinction between “incidents actually happening” and “being told by the media that incidents happened.” Once he correctly infers that the attribution of death to fans is a laughable premise swallowed only by fools, and thus that all the “incidents” of fan death reported by the Korean media are not actually incidents at all…it becomes quite easy to dismiss and ignore the fan death myth…as anyone with half a brain did long ago.
Well, I stand neutral on this issue. Fan death isnt a proven theory, but it’s not a disproven one either. So far, the chief reason offered for the invalidity of fan death has been that it only seems to happen in Korea (or surrounding East Asia), and no where else. Well, there’s something else that only happens in Korea, the fact that at least two Korean males died from overexposure to PC room gaming. This is also a peculiarly Korean phenomenon, but the causes just happen to be much more clearer.
I dont think lack of skepticism or blind belief is the chief cause of the persistence of this unusual phenomenon. Granted sociological inertia is ALWAYS a factor in any society. I think the main culprit is the fact that Korea is not a particularly litigious society (yet). If fan death was something that people could sue about, then there’d be all kinds of studies done and folks would be all up in arms about it until the issue was laid to rest one way or another. In the US, it was not scientists or “rational, logical” thinkers that did away with outmoded ways of thinking but the lawyers. So until Korea becomes the kind of place where people could sue a major fast food corporation for spilling hot coffee on themselves or for making them fat by overconsumption of their products, we will just have to deal with it.
The main reason for considering fan death an urban legend isn’t that it only seems to occur in Korea. It’s that there aren’t any reasonable explanations about how it could occur in the first place. Whether it’s hypothermia, a “vortex,” CO2 accumulation or whatever, no “hypothesis” stands up to scrutiny. There would have to be some extremely obscure process at work, so obscure that it has never been observed or even considered anywhere else before. In contrast, there was nothing mysterious about the way the PC room folks died, except why they’d want to do that to themselves in the first place. Then again, I did play X-Com for eight hours once…
There are lots of urban legends everywhere. The only reason fan death is notable is that it’s believed in so strongly by so many people. Even so, it hardly deserves 69 comments.
Whether it’s hypothermia, a “vortex,” CO2 accumulation or whatever, no “hypothesis” stands up to scrutiny.
If you take this line of thought to its logical conclusion, the line of thought being that the various hypotheses regarding fan death must be held up to scientific scrutiny, then obviously the next question becomes, how exactly does one perform an experiment to either prove or disprove fan death? You would also realize that proving fan death is more easier than not proving fan death, ie the person dies. The fact that a person doesnt die during the experiment is NOT a disproof of fan death because fan death is already understood as a probabilistic phenomenon (ie, it doesnt happen to EVERYONE). Which brings us to the final and the most important difficulty, that since it is difficult to DISPROVE fan death, and the only conclusive end is to PROVE fan death by demonstrating a death under laboratorily controlled conditions, effectively, this becomes an experiment where the out is to effectively kill someone. Any concerned expats would like to volunteer themselves for the sake of science???
What else is there to do but hold such claims up to scrutiny? So some people think that a mixture of lemon juice and vaseline, properly applied, is an effective contraceptive. Or burning special candles in your ears can increase your mental health. There’s no reason to answer with just a shrug.
As far as the possible causes, given what we know about physical processes (the human body, and fans), there’s not much need to perform actual experiments. Do fans displace oxygen with Co2? Can moving air, which isn’t cold itself, induce hypothermia (considering moreover that it’s only acting on the skin)? Can a weak vortex of air prevent a person from breathing? Can a mildly dry mouth swell up enough to block a person’s breathing? Unless there’s something very unusual about the fans themselves, there wouldn’t be much point in a formal study.
Then again, plenty of money’s been thrown away on questionable research. One chimp with one fan in a closed room? I’d prefer it if I were the chimp, give the alternatives.
I’ve slept in a closed room with a fan pointed at me hundreds of times. I’ve somehow miraculously lived to talk about it. Can we put this one to bed?
bluejives: Are you neutral on the tooth fairy, too?
There’s plenty to disprove the tooth fairy: parents put money under pillows, and no-one has actually seen the tooth fairy. The end.
There’s also plenty to disprove Fan Death. Lab experiments are not needed, the data is there to be analysed. When people die in the rest of the world, actual causes of death are found - none are attributed to the fan killing the victim (without touching them). Therefore, Korea must have it wrong.
Even if there are more instances in Korea of people dying at night with the doors closed and the fan on (there isn’t), it would not be the fan’s fault, but some other variable particular to Korea. As they say: you can’t prove a negative. And there is no positive evidence for Fan Death.
This phenomenon is only interesting because it is a superstitious meme that is resistant to debunking, not because there might be some truth to it.
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[...] Friday, July 28, 2006psssst! don’t pass it along: Fan Death isn’t real. i guess, a few Koreans were bound to stumble across the Wikipedia entry sometime, and with nearly every foreigner in the country always laughing hysterically in your face when admitting fear to sleeping with the fan on and the window, someone in a position of reasonable authority was bound to step up and “denounce” it as an Urban Legend. the actual tid-bit is in Korean, but another blogger was kind enough to break it down. ah, but the real fun is in the comments [isn’t always]: [...]