The Chosun Ilbo reports on three recent cases of Gwangju residents believed to have succumbed to fan death. The first victim was a 25-year-old who returned home after a night of drinking, didn’t show up for work the next day, and was discovered by his brother lying on the floor next to a whirring fan. Police declined to list fan death as the official cause but noted that the man was not ill and there was no evidence of foul play. The two other victims of deadly fan attacks were a 56-year-old and a 35-year-old found dead in his sleep on the floor of a restaurant where he worked.
Warnings, Timers, Yet Still More Fan Deaths
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lol
He spent the night drinking and he wasn’t ill?
This after The Chosun forcefully took MBC and others to task over their mad cow hoax reports.
I REALLY wanna see candlelight vigils against fans – PLEASE!
You won’t — America does not export fans to Korea.
I’ve watched enough CSI episodes on OCN to know that the fan is deliberate misdirection. Dust the fan for prints and I’m sure you’ll find several greasy sets, including the older brother’s. He’s your man.
If the fan don’t fit, you must acquit!!!
That almost happened to me last Friday night. Went out drinking, got up to relieve myself in the middle of the night, tripped over my fan and hit my head on the TV cabinet. I ALMOST DIED OF FAN DEATH! Thankfully my only injury was a minor concussion.
A fan attempted to murder me a few years ago while I was sleeping. Luckily, I was able to fend off my attacker and managed to unplug the electrical cord.
It was truly a harrowing experience.
I actually killed my fan a couple of months ago. I tripped over the cord and sent it crashing to the floor. Smashed in the front of it and broke the plastic blades. Anticipating a hot and humid summer, and throwing all caution to the wind, I replaced it with two new fans. So far, so good.
You know, it must be pretty easy to collect life insurance in Korea. You need money, just turn on a fan in the old guy’s room while he’s sleeping…
OMG That’s brilliant! Good bye spouse, hello new life in Thailand!
Yes… and they may not even perform an autopsy!
They do autopsies in South Korea?
Only on the fan
@10
That is, until they plot against you!
I need hardly remind all expats that I’ve long been fighting a desperate, rear-guard action on the reality of fan death, which should be taken seriously and not made light of. Some misguided, arrogant expats whose minds have been tainted by Orientalism continue to disparage the truth about fan death. Some even compose parodies pretending to defend the truth of fan death even while subjecting fan-death believers to utter scorn! If you doubt my word, then visit my blog and search for entries under “fan death” — you’ll see my exposé of such occidental cads.
Jeffery Hodges
* * *
I guess Korean reporters need to learn that the simplest solution is usually the right one, in this case alcohol poisoning (young man out drinking) and heart failure (two middle-aged men).
Look, I’ve had a fan near-death experience. Stop rolling your eyes! Listen!
During the winter I store my fans in that weird weigh station in back of my apartment. It should be a balcony but it’s not, because the sun might touch somebody or something.
Anyway, I put my fans back there in the winter and my space heaters bakc ther in the summer. I’ve brought my fans this summer and have been using them but my wife believes in fan death so I have to put the fan in a place where it only blows on me, very close to me, and angled right in my face. I woke up choking the other day. I couldn’t breath. My wife gave me a very awkward and officially unrecommended hiemlich. I coughed up a lint-ball the size of my cat.
Everybody, clean your fans when you bring them out of the weird place out back.
Dammit, Robert! You’ve got to do something about prioritizing the comment box over those endless credits in the margins. My writing is starting to resemble Lewis Carrol nonsense.
Or give us back the preview. If I say please twice will it sway you. Please, please. Dammit, my pleading wandered off into the Korean rectangle again.
There’s absolutely no telling what I’ve created.
For the record, in these summer months, I’ve left my ceiling fan on all night pretty much every day. I’m still very much alive folks even though I’m ethnically Korean and I have that special MM gene that makes more more susceptible to hypothermia while sleeping…
Now
I understand
why some people
post
like this.
Honestly, I thought it was some kind of new free-verse.
Sorry, don’t ban me, Oranckay. I’m not going to hack off any of my digits.
I wonder how they’d explain igloos. After all, Inuits are closely related to Koreans.
Three words: carbon monoxide poisoning.
My friend used to sleep inside a sleeping bag during the summer months that had a large box fan taped to one end. He did this every summer for years and years. He is still alive.
/sarcasm on
Maybe only certain types of fans kill?
/sarcasm off
#14,
Yes, of course autopsies are performed in Korea. It’s just that not everyone does them – they’re typically handled by the authorities here.
#19:
So, your wife factually believes that fans are a mortal danger, but doesn’t mind having one blowing right in your face? Uh, yeah.
Therein lies the major reason I’m nonreligious: clearly most religious people I know don’t act as if they really believe the stuff either. If my Christian friends thought someone was coming to my house to stab me to death, I’m confident they’d all be freaking out. Yet they claim to believe I’ll burn in hell for eternity, and seem to sleep pretty damn well.
I can’t believe so many Koreans still believe the fucking nonsense of ‘fan death’. FD fear makes mad cow fear look sane.
Just for the hell of it I hit the “translate” button on the Chosun piece and this is what I got:
Let’s hear it for Mr. Fan sleep
YEA!!! Go Mr. Fan Sleep!!!
Sometimes I just want to wonder around the streets of Korea holding a fan with steaks tied to it. Just to see the reaction.
I am starting to get a little worried; I have two dogs that I keep in the kitchen and I thought I was doing them a favor by placing a fan in the kitchen to help keep them cool and circulate the air…..but after reading this I wonder if this is a good idea. If the SPCA knows about my fan will they come and take my dogs away? Now that I am thinking about it – perhaps this is why my cocker peed on my shoes……
Sometimes I just want to wonder around the streets of Korea holding a fan with steaks tied to it.
Go for it.
Sometimes I just want to wonder around the streets of Korea holding a fan with steaks tied to it.
Go for it.
If I were you I’d also learn how to say in Korean “fan death” “mad cow” and “some spare change makes me go away”.
Boy, this series of comments is so delicious after “Fan Death is Real” post. Love it. Love every bit of it.
None of these guys were in their 70s. Fan death may be “real”, but Korean reporting of it is still mostly rubbish.
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