Good day to all of you readers out there

It’s hot. Like reeeally hot. Its days like this where I do believe that in fact global warming is a true phenomenon. Either that or some spaceman turned up the sun, in which case he should turn it back down again.

Air-conditioning in Korea (or “Air-con” as they like to call it) is…haphazard. Most places have it, but its like no one explained to these people how to use it. First thing in the morning in our classroom, my co-teacher throws open the windows, throws open the doors, and turns on the AC full blast, as the words of my father echo through my head:

“You’re air-conditioning the outside!!!”

And its not just her…everyone here runs the AC with at least one window/door open. I think it might have something to do with their fear of dust. Also, fan death might be related to this phenomenon. What is fan death, you ask? Well, let me enlighten you…

Before I tell you about fan death, I must warn you that this theory has been accepted by almost all Koreans without hesitation, including medical doctors and physicists alike. It has never been questioned by popular media, and in fact every fan made and/or sold in Korea bears a warning label.

Koreans believe that if you fall asleep with a fan on in a closed room, there is a great possibility that you will, in fact, die in your sleep. Why? My first guesses were along the lines of perhaps an accidental electrical fire due to faulty engineering, maybe spontaneous fan combustion, who knows.

I have heard many reasons why Koreans believe this, and all of them are, in fact, silly. Here are some reasons (as confirmed by Wikipedia):

1. That an electric fan creates a vortex, which sucks the oxygen from the enclosed and sealed room and creates a partial vacuum inside.

2. That an electric fan chops up all the oxygen particles in the air leaving none to breathe.

3. The fan uses up the oxygen in the room and creates fatal levels of carbon dioxide.

4. That if the fan is put directly in front of the face of the sleeping person, it will suck all the air away, preventing one from breathing.

5. That fans contribute to hypothermia, or abnormally low body temperature. As the metabolism slows down at night, one becomes more sensitive to temperature, and thus supposedly more prone to hypothermia. If the fan is left on all night in a sealed and enclosed room, believers in fan death suppose that it will lower the temperature of the room to the point that it can cause hypothermia.

Modern science including the laws of physics and pure common sense will tell you that any Joe Dirt out there could figure out that the mere notion fan death is utterly ridiculous. As it turns out, most fan-death cases can be explained by other medical conditions. But I’d like to see you try to convince a Korean of that.

Remember: for 99% of all Koreans, fan death is real. So the next time you switch off the light with the fan running, think about the consequences. Or just check to make sure your fan wasn’t made in Korea.