Korean Job Discussion Forums

[ajuma]

At the end of an article in the Korean Times (or Hearald...whichever is kind of orange) that was talking about the heat wave, it seems an 82 year old woman was taken to the hospital with heart problems because she slept with the fan on all night!

Cause and effect, right??

[Pak Yu Man]

I sleep with a fan right at my head all night. My wife says nothing. She must want insurance.

Remember that guy who stayed in the PC room for 10 days and he died. It was ruled fan death. The little fan in the computer just took longer to kill him cause it was so small.

[FlagWaver]

What you whities don't realize is that there is a component that Korean physiology has that kills them after a few hours of fan air without fresh air coming in from outside. This is a documented truth for Koreans, in case you didn't know. There are documented case of this happening in european countries with the same concrete type buildings. Add in humitiy and the way that the Korean homes and building are built, you get the deadly fan death killing everyone it can get it's slimy, windy, ugly hands on.

The deaths appear to reflect variations in environment more than they do regional differences. For example, deaths resulting from cardiovascular diseases have their highest incidence in the more climatically-stressed, more urban-industrial states.

Deaths resulting from respiratory diseases, on the other hand, have their highest rate of occurrence in the densely populated, highly urbanized cities like Seoul, Tokyo, and similar size climates and cities where the combination of winter cold and atmospheric pollution is the most pronounced.


Fan death is a result of the following factors:

1. Human Physiology
2. Building style
3. Fan blow power set too high
4. Humidity and pollution in the air
5. Lack of respect for fanauthoritariy


The result of a combination of all or some of the above factors causes the lungs to be paralyzed, and death soon follows.

Simple, really.

[dodgybarnet]

NEWS JUST IN: More people die in cities than in the countryside, and Hospitals are statistacally the most dangerous buildings to be in, as loads of people die in them (rather than say, deaths in hagwons).

NEXT HOUR: Half the population is below average!

[captain planet]

well, think about it like this. a fan on you all night can dehydrate you quickly without you realizing it. it also can kick up a lot of dust and junk, plus they don't turn off after the weather gets chilly, so it will make you cold even though it was working during th heat of the day.
i'm not saying it's a lethal sort of thing for the average 28 year old, but it can put added stress on someone, and if they're a frail 82 year old woman, it might put them over the edge. of course, it could just be a bunch of hokey superstition.

i really don't care, i'm just tired of seeing these stupid threads.

[dodgybarnet]

[vlcupper]

Somebody needs to send this in to Mythbusters. They should do a show about myths in other countries.

[own_king]

[captain planet]

hey grandma, come here. we wanna see if this'll kill you.

[mindmetoo]

[vlcupper]

[JongnoGuru]

[vlcupper]

Quote:

Yeah yeah but you forget the "unique Korean physiology" counter argument.

[charlieDD]

I think it comes from fans being a foreign thing introduced to the population really only after the 60's (some wealthy, of course, had fans much earlier, but for the average folks, a fan was a luxury item).

It probably isn't good to sleep with a fan blowing on you all night, especially if you have not grown up with the luxury of the option of having a fan to cool you at night. And maybe some people got sick early on when they ran the fan all night. This got exagerrated out of proportion by aujummas and halmonis (grandmas) to the urban legend / myth it is still today. Probably a bit of the frugality factor of that generation in there too - - fan on all night is using up electricity, so tell the kids they'll die if they leave it on all night!

Just another one of those things Koreans take as granted even though they defy logic or even education.

Give 'em another generation!

Okay, kind of related: Another experiment on the bus: (it's a long ride, so . . . gotta do something to make it interesting!): If you open a window, even in the nicest weather, Koreans sitting next to, behind you will want to close it. Even if the bus is quite warm and the driver hasn't turned on the air con. My experiment: I'm the first one on the bus from the terminal stop. As I get on, I open a few windows randomly as I head to my seat. Sure enough, without a moment's hesitation or any thought, as soon as a local sits in one of the seats with the opened window nearby, . . . slam . . window gets closed . . even before the bus starts to move and cause any kind of wind to come through it.
Figured it could be that they think the air is polluted?

[vlcupper]

Well the air is polluted. I think it's that plus they don't want to mess up their hair. You know how obsessed they can be about their looks.



Remember an article in one of the papers a few months ago about Koreans in the early 20th century? I remember one story about how they thought the evil white people were taking their children's eyes so they could make developing fluid for photographs. That myth didn't last very long, but this seems to be sticking around. Are they actually teaching this in school along with blood type determines personality type, and astrology?