Different cultures have different superstitions. My aunt once stopped me eating a whole bowlful of pistachios because they were too “garam”. Direct translation of “garam” is warm, or maybe spicy. They were neither. I kept asking her “But what does that mean?” And what adults do in India when a child or a young person is asking a question and they don’t have an answer, is brush you off. You’re not important enough to warrant the answer, is the implication.
I never did find out why the pistachios were too garam. Too salty? Liable to cause high blood pressure?
Then there was the one where my mom died and my uncle insisted on taking us to dunkin donuts and feeding us donuts, or something sweet. Bwuh? Turns out you are supposed to eat something sweet after a death so…the taste of death goes away, or maybe so the spirit doesn’t haunt you…or something. Still never got an answer, still got brushed off. That was three years ago.
I’m sure that Korean culture isn’t too dissimilar. Accepted beliefs, unquestioned, and when people do question, they just get brushed off because there really isn’t an answer.
Not quite. You usually do get an answer. Actually, a lot of times the elder (parent, aunt/uncle, grandparent, etc) will tell you why you shouldn’t do something, even if it’s complete nonsense. Otherwise, how would you understand why you should or shouldn’t do something?
So, there’s a kind of logic, even if the superstition/belief is not entirely rational.
As mentioned earlier in the thread, part of Korean culture is to accept the explanation, even when it doesn’t make sense.
I assume it’s like Chinese medicine where foods are arbitrarily grouped into “hot” and “cold” based on how they affect your bodily humours or energy field or whatever.
I disagree that Koreans view it as superstition. The explanations for fan death are pseudo-scientific (it causes hypothermia, it restricts air circulation). They used to report it on the news, for god’s sake.
This is true, The Korea Consumer Protection Board states (taken from Skeptoid, one of my favorite podcasts):
In other words, people whose job it is to know better, think you can suffocate from a freaking fan in Korea.
Anywho, I am really interested in the OP more than fan death which is obvious bunk… I’m interested in how many of them know it’s a made up cause of death known only to their country.
I’m sure a lot of the younger generation are aware that foreigners think it’s silly. Almost every foreign teacher in Korea has probably brought it up at least once with their students.
For the most part, Koreans believe that there is at least some truth to the idea that fans can cause death. However, as I’ve already stated upthread, it’s not something that Koreans are obsessed over or anything. It’s not like there’s a movement of people protesting the fan manufacturing companies, or a counter-movement saying that it’s all bullshit.
Well… fans can contribute to death. But the circumstances have to be just right. Take, for instance, an old man. Liquor him up to the gills on soju (not exactly a difficult task). Have him pass out in a poorly ventilated, hot shack/apartment in the summer where the air temperature is above body temperature and when he’s already dehydrated from a night of drinking. Then turn a fan on him which, essentially, turns the room into a convection cell and is constantly pushing hot, dry air against the drunk’s skin. Bingo bango bongo, fan death.
Of course, that’s not how the stories normally go. And, IIRC, all (most?) fans in Korea have an automatic shutoff timer so that they don’t kill ya.
If it’s a myth, it isn’t limited to Korea. According to the US EPA an electric fan in a hot unventilated space really can be dangerous. Why this would be more widely known or problematic in Korea than anywhere else is a mystery, but it does seem to be a genuine hazard everywhere.
The EPA includes the following warning in a guide to city managers for handling ‘extreme heat events’.
