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Merged Fan Death in Korea

DonJunbar

Thinker
D
Joined
Apr 2, 2007
Messages
128
Hi everyone,

I'm the guy who sent Randi the e-mail about the Korean pseudo-science superstition that an electric fan can kill you if you sleep with the window closed. First, it is a very widespread belief echoed by doctors, homicide detectives, the media, and even fan manufacturers themselves, the one group who has a vested interest in disproving this belief.

The diatribe by my fellow expat in this week's newsletter gave me a jolt. A lot of times foreigners pounce on this Korean belief to the point where it comes off as bigotry. There are youtube movies made about it, websites dedicated to discussing it, and many, many angry flame wars on expat boards. When Kevin O'Brien writes, "Koreans on the whole are unfortunately, quite far from being 'rational and sensible' folks," my first reaction is :jaw-dropp .

The JREF has the noble mission of busting frauds, not insulting a nation by laughing at one of their superstitions. I hope you guys are willing to take the high road on this one and not judge all Koreans too harshly like so many expats here do. In the newest letter, I was impressed by Randi's response, and I'm glad he met some good sceptical Koreans. They do exist more than one might think.

Anyway, it was an honour to have my letter read by Randi, and I look forward to chatting with you guys on other topics in the future.
 
Welcome DonJumber!

When I lived in Seoul over 20 years ago, I encounterd the fan folklore. It was pretty widespread at the time, and even the academic dean of the university (Sam-Yook) I though for warmed me not to run a fan in a closed room, and gave me a paper written by some academic that said that elctric motors suck the qi out of the air, creating a dangerous situation for the elderly and others with severly reduced "Root Qi."

I encountered it again a few years later in Japan, when my landlady warned me not to run the air-con with out a window cracked open to let in freash air.

The topic came up again seven years ago in a Shiatsu class I was taking in a Massage School in Northern California (Heartwood Institute). The Instructor, a Caucasian American, Paul Pitchford, insisted it was all true and that people have used up their "Gen-ki" must not risk cutting themselves off from other qi sorces, such as clean air.

The Brouhaha reminds me of the one that was raging before the Seoul Olympics about Koreans eating dog. Yes, there was a breed of "Yellow Dog," that some quarters of Korean society had eaten in times gone by. But the majority hadn't savored this so-called Korean delicacy, and students, especially, would get angry if someome brought the topic up, just because of the sterotyping.

I suppose this superstition will hang on for many years to come, just as various supersttion still have truck in our so-called "First World" culture.
Heck, we are inventing new ones, that we're exporting to the world, such as "The Law of Attraction."
 
Hyparxis said:
When I lived in Seoul over 20 years ago, I encounterd the fan folklore. It was pretty widespread at the time, and even the academic dean of the university (Sam-Yook) I though for warmed me not to run a fan in a closed room, and gave me a paper written by some academic that said that elctric motors suck the qi out of the air, creating a dangerous situation for the elderly and others with severly reduced "Root Qi."
Click to expand...

This is interesting. So maybe fan death came from spiritualist ideas about qi or whatever, and then in order to defend the belief people started looking for scientific sounding ideas to claim it was real. I've never heard any Korean claim that fans are dangerous to your qi. Their explanations have molecules and natural vacuums and vortexes and chemical reactions and physiology. It would be interesting to trace the history of why people thought fans are deadly.

Hyparxis said:
The Brouhaha reminds me of the one that was raging before the Seoul Olympics about Koreans eating dog. Yes, there was a breed of "Yellow Dog," that some quarters of Korean society had eaten in times gone by. But the majority hadn't savored this so-called Korean delicacy, and students, especially, would get angry if someome brought the topic up, just because of the sterotyping.
Click to expand...

That's exactly how it works. The vast majority of Koreans these days would never eat dog, but they still get irritable when foreigners insult them about it. I think fan death would be the same.

Anyway, in my letter to Randi I forgot to mention how I convinced my wife, herself an adamant sceptic, that fan death isn't real. Last summer we slept with the fan on and the windows closed every night, and we didn't die. For the longest time she insisted "Fan death is real, and it's very scientific!" Now she's kicking herself she ever believed in fan death.
 
Interesting. I've come across the "fan death" superstition quite a bit, but the "qi" explanation is definitely a new one on me. Most Koreans I know try to attach a vague scientific reason to it, and I've heard everything from hypothermia to fans sucking the air out of the room.

I am a little surprised that Hyparxis encountered this in Japan. My wife is Japanese and I have spent quite a bit of time there as well, and never heard of it before coming to Korea. She does believe quite strongly in the "blood type/personality" thing, in spite of my best efforts to dissuade her from it (a belief also common in Korea).

Anyway, I hate to sound like a fence sitter, but my own experience is pretty much in the middle of Randi's and this week's letter. I have met plenty of superstitious Koreans, from those who believe in fortune tellers, fan death, the connection between blood type and personality, etc. But, most Koreans I know are also pretty down to earth, and I wouldn't say they are any more superstitious than an average American. All countries have some form of common superstition, and neither Korea nor the U.S. is exempt from that.
 
I interpreted this story as simply an example of the odd beliefs that exist around the world. I didn't see it as reflecting badly on Korea.
 
gtc said:
I interpreted this story as simply an example of the odd beliefs that exist around the world. I didn't see it as reflecting badly on Korea.
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The story and Randi's commentary weren't reflecting badly on Korea. I was more referring to the one letter that cast Korea with a rather broad brush.
 
One theory for the origin of the Fab Death is an actual killer: the traditional "ondol floor." The older version of this heating method was to trap hot air from burning coal in a cavity under the floorboards. However, if there were cracks in the floor, carbon monoxide would escape into the room. Yes, this is a documented, sceintific cause of death. So people were repeatedly warned to leave windows cracked open, and this got extended to the electric fan.

It's a maybe.

The funny thing is that traditional Westen superstition held that windows should be tightly closed least the "miasmal night vapors" enter and cause disease.

I too slept with the windows closed while running my air-con in spite of what the landlady had said.

I was living in Fukuoka, just a stones throw across the strait from the Korean Pennisula. So the idea could well have migrated to my landlady.

Yeah, what I was told by the Academic Dean at Samyook University and later by Paul Pitchford was that the electric motors sucked the ki or qi (Aka Life force) out of the air.

We get all worked up about foreign superstitions, and treat our own as natural. It's like all the horrible things some people point to in the Koran or the Hindu Scriprtures while the Bible's God-awful wonders are glossed over.
One man's superstition, is another's proverb.
 
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ARubberChickenWithAPulley said:
She does believe quite strongly in the "blood type/personality" thing, in spite of my best efforts to dissuade her from it (a belief also common in Korea).
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Yes, it arrived via Japan actually. I've done a bunch of research into blood typing. It annoys me more than other superstitions, including fan death. It originally started as pro-Aryan propaganda in Nazi Germany to show that Aryans are superior to Jews and Asians because the blood type B is less common in Aryans.
 
In the small time superstition department, in Japan it's considered bad luck for a romantic couple to see a shooting star. The opposite in America.

The Japanese and Koreans have the same aversion to the number four that came via the Chinese for the numeral four that roughly sounds like the same Chinese word for death. I found buildings in Japan that didn't have a numerical fourth floor, just as some old time buildings in America didn't have a 13th.

Many Japanese wall calenders have days marked according to a system of astrology called "Nine Star." The inauspicious days are called "Butsumetsu," meaning literaly "Buddha's demise."

It's enlightning to learn the various and contradictory superstitions of different cultures.
 
And it's hilarious to see westerners say "Look at those superstitious people in other cultures! Why can't they be more like my culture, which is totally realistic and doesn't have any weird supersti--hey look, I think I see an image of the Virgin Mary in that puddle!"

I've seen some buildings in Korea, mostly big international hotels where I can't afford to stay, in which the elevators are missing both the fourth floor and the 13th floor. It's a nice way of putting it--"Your superstitions can coexist with my superstitions in harmony."
 
DonJunbar said:
And it's hilarious to see westerners say "Look at those superstitious people in other cultures! Why can't they be more like my culture, which is totally realistic and doesn't have any weird supersti--hey look, I think I see an image of the Virgin Mary in that puddle!"
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Pshaw! We don't even need to go as far as religious beliefs, look at old wives tales. My mom used to yell at me not to go outside with wet hair or I'd get a cold. I wore my hair very short while living at home and going to college, but once I graduated I started growing it out and rarely if ever is it dry when I leave for work.

I get about 1 cold a year... usually in the summer.
 
UnrepentantSinner said:
My mom used to yell at me not to go outside with wet hair or I'd get a cold.
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It could.

If you are harbouring a virus and your body temperature drops because you go outside with wet hair, those viruses could obtain a foothold because they replicate better at lower temperatures.
(And then your immune system raises your body temperature - by resetting the thermostat in the brain - to help fight the virus.)

There's often a little truth there.
 
Hyparxis said:
I found buildings in Japan that didn't have a numerical fourth floor, just as some old time buildings in America didn't have a 13th....It's enlightning to learn the various and contradictory superstitions of different cultures.
Click to expand...

They may not be contradictory. It might be a racial difference. :cool:
 
BillyJoe said:
It could.

If you are harbouring a virus and your body temperature drops because you go outside with wet hair, those viruses could obtain a foothold because they replicate better at lower temperatures.
(And then your immune system raises your body temperature - by resetting the thermostat in the brain - to help fight the virus.)

There's often a little truth there.
Click to expand...

However it wouldn't be causing the cold, only facillitating currently present rhinovirus that my body had been successfuly fending off until that point.

I wonder if there are any actual studies.
 
The first fan death of the year has been reported. They found a man who died in a hotel room. His blood alcohol content was extremely high, and our friend the electric fan was pushing waves of death at him.

Someone else told me there was a special on TV about fan death, the main point being "It's real! Shut up!"

http://imnews.imbc.com/replay/nwdesk/article/2032618_2687.html
Large_648828.jpg
 
Oh, so young! Why didn't he listen? May the fan of death blow his soul to the radiator of happiness! :rolleyes:
 
OMG. My Japanese wife warned me about fan death. Good to see it's been debunked and now I can prove it to her. I grew up sleeping with a fan on my body during the summer as a means to keep cool. I still prefer it. But she freaked out about it and couldn't believe my ignorance about the grave danger. "Everyone knows about it" she told me. She's seen it in the news many times, so she assumed it was true.
 
You might tell her that nearly every person in the tropics (or, indeed, humid warm zones) use fans overnight to stay cool. It's considered a necessity, and it has been that way for all of recorded history. So far, there have been absolutely no reports of mass wipeouts due to "fan death". Quite the contrary - the people sleep better so they wake up fresher.

Also, what is the difference between a fan blowing on you, and having a window open and a breeze blowing on you?
 
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