Fan Death Claims Another Innocent Life

Perhaps the single most misguided pseudo-scientific belief held by the majority population of any otherwise reasonable nation, the myth of Fan Death suggests that, if you sleep in a room in which a standard electric fan is running and the doors and windows are closed, you will die. In Korea, this belief is not a fringe thing; mainstream Korean media outlets cite fan death as the primary cause of summertime deaths, and medical professionals have attempted to back up the urban legend with research. Even the government endorses the idea; in 2006, they issued a report claiming fan death was among the top five causes of death during the summer months. The explanations for death by fan range from semi-plausible theories regarding hyperthermia (aka overheating) to utterly bizarre explanations involving the shredding of oxygen molecules and the creation of air-sucking vortices that create vacuums and cause asphyxiation by siphoning air to nowhere. When an exasperated Australian friend of mine told a teacher at my hagwon that he’d slept with fans on for his entire life, she looked grave and told him, “You’re very lucky.” The whole thing is totally implausible, unless you’re talking about a fan that’s been possessed by Gozer, or a North Korean spy fan.