Today, while I was preparing for class, I overheard my students playing in my classroom, as usual. The gist of their daily activity routine goes like this: go to Jason’s class, touch stuff, run around the table chasing after someone, run out of the class, run back in, lock someone out of the classroom, repeat.

Well, a few weeks ago we got these machines installed in each classroom that billows sweet wonderful cool air no matter what temperature it is. They call it ‘air-con’. Most of my readers know these devices as ‘air-conditioners’. I’m going to deduce that the air-conditioner is an offspring to the device known as the ‘fan’.

This is a significant deduction because of what I overheard one of the kids says as they were diong their before class playing routine.

“Danny! No! Don’t lock me out! Danny! The air-conditioners on! You could die!”

Now, let me bring you to my new purchase. A fan. Correction, it’s a Dokdo Wind Fan, bringing the wondrous wind of the contreversial island to your one-room apartment. What I found interesting about it was that it had a sleep timer as shown in the photo below.

This point, to any average person, is rather pointless. Perhaps a sleep timer on a fan could be handy some time. But to an average Korean, it is vital. No, no, it’s life-or-death.

Which brings me to the key-point of this entry, bringing it all the way back to the title:

It’s an old common belief in Korea, an urban legend if you will, that if one goes to sleep with the fan running, and windows and doors shut, one will die.

Sleep timers, and “You could die!” make so much more sense huh?

What’s weird about this particular urban-legend is that it appears to be living strong today. I mean my 8-year old student believed it. I’ve met people my age who believe it.

In the words of a FanDeath.net :

“If you ask any Korean about fan death, they will almost certainly vehemently argue that it is indeed true.”

I’ve watched this happen before my own eyes. He didn’t believe Nino when he told him that he sleeps with the fan on every night. There are even doctors who claim this, and even news reports. I’m imagiing some sort of counter, counting the annual fan-death toll.

How could this have gotten so far out of hand? Well, I’m not gonna explain that part. It’s less funny. You can read about Fan-death at fandeath.net, and the very informative wikipedia article, which includes information about the whole getting out of hand thing.

May 24th, 2006 | Life in Korea, Random shiz

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