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<P>Well, he fishers at the Cholla coast have special (dialectal) names for winds from the different directions, and I am sure there must be other examples, greetings, Werner Sasse <BR><BR></P></DIV>
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<DIV></DIV>From: <I>Lauren Deutsch <lwdeutsch@earthlink.net></I><BR>Reply-To: <I>Korean Studies Discussion List <koreanstudies@koreaweb.ws></I><BR>To: <I>Korean Studies Discussion List <koreanstudies@koreaweb.ws></I><BR>Subject: <I>Re: [KS] Air conditioning and facial paralysis</I><BR>Date: <I>Wed, 20 Sep 2006 22:05:39 -0700</I><BR>>Perhaps related tidbits ...<BR>><BR>>I'm reminded that an excess or deficiency of internal Wind in Traditional<BR>>Oriental Medicine is cause for alarm, as is an external pernicious influence<BR>>of Wind.<BR>><BR>>I recently asked a Korean novelist / playright whether there were any unique<BR>>names for winds in Korean. Or whether there is/are any Wind spirit(s) in the<BR>>shamanist pantheon. I was told that Korean's don't invest any credence
/<BR>>importance in things they don't "see".<BR>><BR>>--<BR>>Lauren W. Deutsch<BR>>835 S. Lucerne Blvd., #103<BR>>Los Angeles CA 90005<BR>>Tel 323 930-2587 Cell 323 775-7454<BR>>E lwdeutsch@earthlink.net<BR>><BR>><BR>> > From: i_heinz fenkl <fenkli@newpaltz.edu><BR>> > Reply-To: Korean Studies Discussion List <koreanstudies@koreaweb.ws><BR>> > Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2006 21:41:46 -0400<BR>> > To: Korean Studies Discussion List <koreanstudies@koreaweb.ws><BR>> > Subject: Re: [KS] Air conditioning and facial paralysis<BR>> ><BR>> > Sounds like a nice structuralist configuration is developing:<BR>> ><BR>> > yontan (black, full of holes, cylindrical, hot) causes death via invisible<BR>> > agent in winter in unventilated room<BR>> > fan (white blade, inversion of holes,
cylindrical, cold) causes death via<BR>> > invisible agent in summer in otherwise unventilated room<BR>> ><BR>> > A classic inverted parallelism.<BR>> ><BR>> > The dongp'ung in the outhouse belief could be attributed to the Korean<BR>> > penchant for associative wordplay -- i.e., tongp'ung --> ttongp'ung<BR>> > Oddly enough, it is also a folk belief that going out to smell the ttong in<BR>> > the outhouse is a way to recover from carbon monoxide poisoning. (My cousins<BR>> > and I were made to do this on two occasions back in the winter of '69.)<BR>> ><BR>> ><BR>> ><BR>> ><BR>> ><BR>> > On Wed, 20 Sep 2006 01:04:07 +1200<BR>> > "Stephen Epstein" <Stephen.Epstein@vuw.ac.nz> wrote:<BR>> >> Dear all,<BR>> >><BR>> >> Thanks to everyone for the
additional information, although I'm still not<BR>> >> much closer to figuring out the answers I'm looking for on fan death. I<BR>> >> suspect that ideas about chungp'ung and so on helped render the idea more<BR>> >> plausible, but they don't really help get to when the story originated and<BR>> >> why it seems to have a Korean localization. Also, I'd heard the theory that<BR>> >> the story may have spread as a result of government-initiated austerity<BR>> >> measures in the post-War period but I imagine someone would have turned up<BR>> >> clearer evidence if so.<BR>> >><BR>> >> One thought I've had is that the notion of fan death got started in Korea as<BR>> >> folk wisdom's summertime inverse parallel to the all too real wintertime<BR>> >> deaths that resulted from yont'an briquettes, as
David mentions below. This<BR>> >> theory fits neatly into a structuralist framework of explanation and might<BR>> >> explain why the idea of fan death is not present in China and Japan, where<BR>> >> yont'an were used but presumably, not the danger they were in Korea as a<BR>> >> result of ondol heating. If my yont'an hypothesis is full of holes (other<BR>> >> than the 32 or so of the briquettes....), please feel free to correct me. My<BR>> >> explanation might also account for an origin of the fan death story after the<BR>> >> Korean War when the use of yont'an began to spread as their price came down<BR>> >> and firewood grew more expensive. For more on yont'an, see the following<BR>> >> piece from the always enlightening Andrei Lankov:<BR>> >>
http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/opinion/200502/kt2005020319114654130.htm ).<BR>> >><BR>> >> Btw, just one further note on chungp'ung: in Pak Wan-so's autobiographical<BR>> >> novel, Who Ate Up All the Singa, she relates that her grandfather succumbed<BR>> >> to dongp'ung in an outhouse (and that everyone knew that a case of dongp'ung<BR>> >> that fell on someone in an outhouse was incurable). Was there a whole range<BR>> >> of "winds" with differing types of stroke/paralysis?<BR>> >><BR>> >> Cheers, Stephen<BR>> >> ________________________________<BR>> >><BR>> >> From: koreanstudies-bounces@koreaweb.ws 이(가) 다음 사람 대신 보냄 David McCann<BR>> >> Sent: 2006-09-19 (화) 오후 8:57<BR>> >> To: Korean Studies Discussion List<BR>> >> Subject: Re: [KS] Air
conditioning and facial paralysis<BR>> >><BR>> >><BR>> >> A related note:<BR>> >><BR>> >> Back in the days, in 1967 my family in Andong set up a heater for me in my<BR>> >> room. It was ondol 'heated,' but a bowl of water beside me on the table<BR>> >> would freeze overnight.<BR>> >><BR>> >> The heater used charcoal briquettes, and seemed to do the job. But one<BR>> >> night, evidently, the wind came from an unexpected direction. I woke up,<BR>> >> barely, in the middle of the night, eyes streaming, mucous pouring, quite<BR>> >> unable to do more than crawl over to the door and fall out onto the small<BR>> >> porch outside.<BR>> >><BR>> >> I realized later how lucky I had been that those yont'an briquettes were so<BR>>
>> terribly full of impurities. I think it was the sulfur that had saved me.<BR>> >> The newspapers carried fairly frequent stories of others who hadn't had such<BR>> >> luck.<BR>> >><BR>> >> David McCann<BR>> >><BR>> >> On 9/18/06 4:02 PM, Edward Massengill wrote:<BR>> >><BR>> >> Just as I was getting a big kick out of teasing my Korean wife about the<BR>> >> apparent absurdity of “death by fan” (which she believes) the picture was<BR>> >> clouded by references to “cold air” and “paralysis”.<BR>> >><BR>> >><BR>> >><BR>> >> Just a few weeks ago, one of my best friends told me that one night<BR>> >> recently she inadvertently left her air conditioning system on very low. The<BR>> >> next morning she woke up with paralysis
(hopefully temporary but still<BR>> >> present after more than a month) on one side of her face. Neither she nor her<BR>> >> doctors are Korean.<BR>> >><BR>> >><BR>> >><BR>> >> Edward Massengill<BR>> >><BR>> >> Amateur Koreanist<BR>> >><BR>> >><BR>> >><BR>> >><BR>> ><BR>> > ----------------<BR>> > Heinz Insu Fenkl<BR>> ><BR>> ><BR>><BR>><BR>><BR></FONT></BLOCKQUOTE></div></html>