I've also heard it was propagated by the Korean government so people would save electricity from not running their fans or air conditioners all night in the sum

I've also heard it was propagated by the Korean government so people would save electricity from not running their fans or air conditioners all night in the summer. The Wikipedia article does have a citation from 1927 [1], though, so it would seem the origins are much older than that. My guess is it's a bit of all of the above. Maybe there was a little bit of belief in it, and the government, but government efforts to reduce energy usage as well as families using it to cover up suicide or drug overdoses helped propagate the belief and make it far more widespread. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_death#cite_ref-2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_death#cite_ref-2