Korean Urban Legends

Facial Treatment

This is a legend that involves cockroaches and a beauty treatment destined to go wrong. It is said that this story may have been created due to many Koreans obsessing over skincare products and having smooth skin.

The story goes as follows:

There was a man that had very bad acne on his face accompanied by scars from smallpox. As time went on, he grew more desperate to get rid of his scars and pimples to the point where he was willing to try anything. He used countless face creams and other beauty treatments that he saw online, but none of them worked. One day, he went to a fortune-teller to ask for advice. The fortune-teller replied with a special method destined to cure the scarring he had on his face. In order for it to work, the man had to find a cockroach before going to bed and put the bug next to his pillow. By sleeping with a cockroach next to him, the fortune-teller explained, it would clear up his scarring and make his skin smoother than before.

Although it sounded ridiculous and disgusting, the man was hopeful and believed what the fortune-teller said. Later on, he finally caught a cockroach and went to his bed. He set it next to his pillow and slept right away. Once morning came, he looked over to the side and saw that the cockroach was gone, and his face was feeling rather itchy. The man rushed over to a mirror and looked at himself. His wishes were finally true- his scars were gone! He was ecstatic that it worked and finally felt relief about his appearance.

However, upon closer inspection, he saw that the scars weren't gone. Instead, his pores were filled with tiny cockroach eggs.

The image of this idea is definitely not a pleasant one, but luckily science can soothe the agonizing thought and debunk this legend. First of all, cockroaches definitely don't lay eggs small enough to fit into pores. Cockroaches lay ootheca, also known as egg cases, which have a bunch of babies inside a single one. These eggs are larger than pores, the average size of one in America being eight millimeters. In other words, they aren't going to jam themselves into your skin anytime soon. What also makes no sense in this legend is the fact that there are thousands of pores on a human face, and one night is definitely not enough time for a single cockroach to lay thousands of egg cases into small holes.

Of course, there have been cases of cockroaches crawling into ears and noses, including a case of a woman having the experience of a cockroach crawling up her nose and into her skull for twelve hours. In that disaster, doctors had to pull the living bug, which was stuck in the skull area between her eyes, out of her nose. But I'd rather not get into any more insect horror for the day.

To sum it up, if someone tells you that the best way to rid of acne is to set a cockroach next to your pillow, just tell them that they are insane and enjoy the rest of your day.