Ways You Die in Korea

A foreigner in Korea has a lot of research to do because there are a lot of ways one can die in Korea that are unheard of in the rest of the world. To insure staying alive in the small country of Korea you need to be up to date on the following: fan death, flower death, and red pen death.

Apparently in Korea, your fan can turn into a killing machine under the right circumstances. Fan death occurs when one closes all the windows and doors and falls asleep with the fan running. This is not a joke, it really happens according to Koreans. I have heard it’s even on the news so it must be true, right?. I am not sure what it is about sleeping in an enclosed area with a fan on that kills you…it just does. I have heard a few explanations, but am not sure how plausible they seem (the fan breaks up the oxygen molecules and you suffocate) and have resorted to “it just kills you”.

Not only are the fans dangerous, you have to watch out for those flowers also… that’s right, flower death. In Korea photosynthesis works a little different, kind of like reverse photosynthesis. Unlike the rest of the world, plants here take in O2 and release CO2. This is where flower death comes in: if you have too many plants in your apartment they will suffocate you. This makes me want to put my Orchids back in the garbage closet where I found them (that’s probably why they were there in the first place). I am pretty attached to my plants though, so I have just been opening my windows every now and then to let some oxygen in.

Red pen is pretty dangerous as well. If you write someone’s name in red pen it is like a death sentence. I actually made the mistake of doing this and the paper with my e-mail address on it was promptly taken away and torn up to save me… I re-wrote it in blue. I did recently notice that on my list of people to e-mail, a few of your names are written in red…sorry, hopefully it doesn’t work unless you are in Korea.

So next time you see a fan, a flower or a red pen and assume they are harmless objects think again. They kill people in Korea all the time. It’s funny, one would think that the massive cloud of smog and pollution, or the excessive Soju drinking would contribute to killing Koreans…but I guess that is just crazy talk.