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MORNING CALM TALES Смерть от вентилятора, предостерегающий ветерок

Published Aug 8, 2026 5:40 am KST

An electric fan is seen in a closed factory in Daejeon in 2006. Yonhap

My first summer in Korea, I thought I was going to die. The heat and the humidity were unbearable. I’d naively assumed that living near the Han River in southeastern Seoul might offer some cooling nighttime breeze. It didn’t. Not even a whisper.

Fortunately, I had a fan — an old, rattling workhorse that labored through the night, valiantly pushing hot air from one side of my room to the other. It didn’t cool me, but it gave the illusion of doing something, which was better than nothing.

The next morning, bleary-eyed after another sleepless night, I trudged off to school. At least the classrooms were air-conditioned, which felt like a miracle.

“Было так жарко прошлой ночью, я спал с включенным вентилятором всю ночь,” — casually сказал я, перекликая присутствующих.

A collective gasp sucked the air out of the room.

I looked up. The entire class was frozen in horror, eyes wide, mouths agape, as if I had just confessed to something unspeakable.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

A long pause. Then one brave student slowly raised her hand.

“Yes?”

“Teacher,” she said carefully, “you cannot sleep with a fan on at night.”

“Why not?”

“You’ll die.”

И вот так я познакомился с одной из самых любопытных — и устойчивых — городских легенд Кореи того времени: смерть от вентилятора.

Models in swimsuits sell electric fans at Homeplus in southern Seoul's Yeongdeungpo during summer 2007. Korea Times file

Every summer, like clockwork, someone would bring it up. It was as reliable as the monsoon rains. There’d be a story in the news — someone found dead in their room with a fan whirring beside them. Cause of death? Obviously, the fan. And just as reliably, an English-language newspaper would run an op-ed by a foreigner debunking the myth, usually with a mix of scientific logic and mild exasperation.

The belief, uniquely Korean as far as I could tell, went something like this: if you sleep in a closed room with a fan running, you could die in your sleep — possibly from suffocation, carbon dioxide poisoning or even hypothermia. None of these causes are medically substantiated, but that never stopped the legend from taking deep root, to the point where everyone believed in it, from students and parents to doctors and even fan manufacturers.

Most electric fans in Korea came equipped with timers designed to switch off automatically, just in case you forgot to save yourself from a death-by-breeze scenario.

A man uses a fan to cool down at his home in central Seoul, July 25, 2012. Korea Times file

This fear even extended to air conditioning. In the early 1990s, I’d often ride in taxis with the AC blasting — and the windows cracked open. A paradox of comfort and caution.

Now, to be fair, the theories behind fan death tried to sound scientific. One went like this: a fan creates a vortex that somehow uses up the oxygen in a room while increasing carbon dioxide levels. Another posited that a fan blowing directly on your face might disrupt your breathing rhythm, slowly depriving you of air. (Because, of course, we all sleep with our noses pressed against the grill of a box fan.) And then there was the hypothermia angle: your body cools too much at night, your metabolism slows and the fan turns your bedroom into a death chamber of chill.

The truth? Fans don’t actually lower room temperature. They circulate air, increasing evaporation and making you feel cooler by aiding perspiration. But they don’t conjure a cold front from the void. You weren’t going to freeze to death with one running — unless your bedroom was also a walk-in freezer.

Still, the myth persisted. People believed it because everyone around them did, and they’d heard stories. Someone died of natural causes, a fan was found running in the room — and voilà, case closed. It was the fan.

Back in 1991, I gently assured my students that I’d survive the night, spinning blades and all. They weren’t convinced. Some even told me I was lucky to be alive. After that, I stopped mentioning my fan habits in class. No need to alarm anyone.

A child looks at electric fans in Yongsan Electronics Market, Aug. 2, 2015. Korea Times file

What surprised me even more was how long the belief endured. Years later, a 2015 NPR report noted that belief in fan death still persisted among many South Koreans, particularly among the older generations — even though it has been debunked in countless experiments. While younger people are now much more skeptical, the myth managed to hold its ground well into the 21st century. Fan timers remain common, and the warnings continue — proof that urban legends, once embedded in the collective imagination, are hard to shake.

To this day, when summer rolls in, I still sleep with a fan on. Timer off. Windows closed. Living dangerously.

Jeffrey Miller is the author of several novels including "War Remains," a story about the early days of the Korean War, and "No Way Out," a thriller set in Seoul in 1990. Reach him at daejeonscribe@yahoo.com.