[Torture]

Originally Posted by photon

I knew someone from Korea that said they wouldn't sleep with the fan on overnight as they'd suffocate. Very weird, supposedly the fans even come with warnings.

Korean Fan Death!

How, exactly, might the electric breeze kill? Theories abound in South Korea, among them that the cold air circulating in a sealed room could cause hypothermia, leading to organ failure. Or maybe they suck out the oxygen, causing suffocation. Some fear that the fan itself converts oxygen molecules into carbon dioxide.

For the record, none of these theories are true. But that has not stopped the Korean news media from reporting on supposed fan deaths. Even the government has endorsed the lethal-breeze idea. In 2006, the state-funded Korean Consumer Protection Board listed “asphyxiation from electric fans and air-conditioners” as one of the top five recurring summer accidents.

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Among dubious Koreans and, well, everyone outside Samsung’s homeland, it is widely suspected that “fan death” was a ruse hatched by the country’s former authoritarian government in the 1970s to discourage citizens from using too much electricity. The country has since been transformed into a thriving democracy, but the myth proved to be a match for electric fans: It survived.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/24/w...old-worry.html