I know a girl who is fairly bi-cultural between U.S. and Korea (born in Korea) and I asked her about fan death shortly after I heard about it since I had a hard time believing such an advanced country could believe something so ridiculous. She said she’d heard of it, and she guessed it didn’t make much sense, but she seemed hesitant to directly contradict something Koreans just “know”.
It’s not quite on fan death level but I was told in the Philippines not to work out within some arbitrary time after eating, or else I would get a hernia.
Koreans are all about (false) humility. It’s not good form to tell someone they’re wrong about something, especially if they’re older than you.
In general, Koreans believe that “cold” things aren’t good for you (especially for women). For example, women are discouraged from sitting on cold surfaces because apparently it’s bad for your lady bits.
And there’s a reason for that belief–a fan can dry you out by increasing evaporation, and being dried out can make you feel a little sniffly for a bit.
In fact, I wondered if that, combined with the increased mortality for common illnesses in the past might have led to the assumption.
In the book Outliers, Gladwell devotes a chapter to the story of Korean Airlines, which had a hideously high accident rate prior to the late 1990’s. A significant part of the problem was the authority structure intrinsic to Korean culture: whereas other airlines had been implementing crew resource management, in the cockpit of KAL airplanes the captain had the status of a god, and his crew dared not question his authority or judgment, even if they felt the safety of the plane was in imminent jeopardy. Some time in the late 1990’s (don’t remember exactly when), KAL radically modified their air crew training program, in part to overcome this aspect of Korean culture; KAL is now one of the safest airlines in the world.
A long highjack - sorry - but it underscores the fact that, yes, there is a power/authority structure in Korean culture that inhibits information flow in bad ways.
Thanks for the interesting data points. From what I have read here I thought it was a settled question. However, for the purposes of this thread, it doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not. It was intended as an example of a belief that people would continue to hold, even if it were comprehensively shown to be untrue.
The problem with finding a better example is that, if there is one, you and I probably believe it just as strongly as those Koreans believe in fan death, so it wouldn’t occur to us to posit it as an example!
Anyway, the larger point being that it’s easy to point at “those crazy Koreans” but maybe we all have irrational but unshakeable beliefs.
Yes, another example where there is a reasonably well-informed minority that “fights ignorance” on it by pointing out that it is false. The very group I’m inquiring about in Korea regarding fan death.
Do we have any Korean Dopers? I mean, my children are from Korea, but are Americans and don’t speak Korean. I’m talking about Korean as in someone in Korea or who primarily has lived there and experienced this from the Korean perspective.
Never knew fan death was such a hot topic for foreigners. It’s not as big of a deal as some of you seem to think. It’s not “NEVER leave the fan on or you’ll DIE!” but more like “probably not too healthy to sleep with the fan blowing on you and maybe kill you. Probably not, but why risk it?”
Kind of like superstition. You could probably walk under that ladder without any ill effect, but it’s not that much trouble to just walk around it.
To me it feels like a good rally point for westerners in Korea to feel smug and laugh at the silly Koreans and their fan death. Meh.
It’s not a hot topic for foreigners. I would guess the vast majority of foreigners are unaware of it. I wouldn’t base any evaluation of foreigners on this thread alone. We’re like…a very, very thin minority.
