[KS] Air conditioning and facial paralysis

[Young Kyun Oh]

One thing I remember about this interesting topic:

I have different associations regarding fan death and facial paralysis.
'Fan death' was, as everyone knows, frequently reported in newspapers in
summer, under such headlines as "Family meets tragedy while sleeping with
the fan on in a small room." I think the reports usually attributed it to
suffocation/asphyxiation caused by sleeping while facing the wind from the
fan (especially in the cases of little children or babies). I don't think
it was also related with sleeping with an air conditioner on, but, then
again, houses equipped with air conditioners were not so common as these
days.      
Facial paralysis was associated with sleeping with one's head on a tadu^mi-
tol 'fulling block' (a slab of stone used to smooth cloth or sheets by
pounding with two sticks).  Since it is made of a solid piece of stone
(granite?), it is a coolest spot where one can lay their heads in summer.
I grew up hearing that sleeping with your head on a tadu^mi-tol would make
your mouth turn.  This might sound like one of those "I know a person whom
it actually happened to" story, but one of my friends in college  came to
school with a partial paralysis on his face one day (1985?). When we asked
him what happened, he answered with an embarrassed smile (well, half a
smile, more likely) that he had slept with his head on a tadu^mi-tol.  It
took him a few weeks to get his face, speech and smile back to normal.

Young Kyun Oh
Arizona State University

-----Original Message-----
From: koreanstudies-bounces at koreaweb.ws [mailto:koreanstudies-
bounces at koreaweb.ws] On Behalf Of Stephen Epstein
Sent: Tuesday, September 19, 2006 6:04 AM
To: Korean Studies Discussion List
Subject: Re: [KS] Air conditioning and facial paralysis

Dear all,
 
Thanks to everyone for the additional information, although I'm still not
much closer to figuring out the answers I'm looking for on fan death. I
suspect that ideas about chungp'ung and so on helped render the idea more
plausible, but they don't really help get to when the story originated and
why it seems to have a Korean localization. Also, I'd heard the theory that
the story may have spread as a result of government-initiated austerity
measures in the post-War period but I imagine someone would have turned up
clearer evidence if so. 
 
One thought I've had is that the notion of fan death got started in Korea
as folk wisdom's summertime inverse parallel to the all too real wintertime
deaths that resulted from yont'an briquettes, as David mentions below. This
theory fits neatly into a structuralist framework of explanation and might
explain why the idea of fan death is not present in China and Japan, where
yont'an were used but presumably, not the danger they were in Korea as a
result of ondol heating. If my yont'an hypothesis is full of holes (other
than the 32 or so of the briquettes....), please feel free to correct me.
My explanation might also account for an origin of the fan death story
after the Korean War when the use of yont'an began to spread as their price
came down and firewood grew more expensive. For more on yont'an, see the
following piece from the always enlightening Andrei Lankov:
http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/opinion/200502/kt2005020319114654130.htm ). 
 
Btw, just one further note on chungp'ung: in Pak Wan-so's autobiographical
novel, Who Ate Up All the Singa, she relates that her grandfather succumbed
to dongp'ung in an outhouse (and that everyone knew that a case of
dongp'ung that fell on someone in an outhouse was incurable). Was there a
whole range of "winds" with differing types of stroke/paralysis?
 
Cheers, Stephen
________________________________

From: koreanstudies-bounces at koreaweb.ws 이(가) 다음 사람 대신 보냄 David
McCann
Sent: 2006-09-19 (화) 오후 8:57
To: Korean Studies Discussion List
Subject: Re: [KS] Air conditioning and facial paralysis


A related note:

Back in the days, in 1967 my family in Andong set up a heater for me in my
room.  It was ondol 'heated,' but a bowl of water beside me on the table
would freeze overnight.

The heater used charcoal briquettes, and seemed to do the job.  But one
night, evidently, the wind came from an unexpected direction.  I woke up,
barely, in the middle of the night, eyes streaming, mucous pouring, quite
unable to do more than crawl over to the door and fall out onto the small
porch outside.

I realized later how lucky I had been that those yont'an briquettes were so
terribly full of impurities.  I think it was the sulfur that had saved me.
The newspapers carried fairly frequent stories of others who hadn't had
such luck.

David McCann

On 9/18/06 4:02 PM, Edward Massengill wrote: 

	Just as I was getting a big kick out of teasing my Korean wife
about the apparent absurdity of “death by fan” (which she believes) the
picture was clouded by references to “cold air” and “paralysis”.

	 

	Just a few weeks ago, one of my best friends told me that one night
recently she inadvertently left her air conditioning system on very low.
The next morning she woke up with paralysis (hopefully temporary but still
present after more than a month) on one side of her face. Neither she nor
her doctors are Korean.

	 

	Edward Massengill

	Amateur Koreanist