Korean Urban Legends 1: Chicken Blood Tatoo (닭피 문신)













This is the first post in a new series on Korean urban legends and spooky stories. We have already mentioned the taboo surrounding tatoos in Korea. This story probably has to do with the fact that many Koreans, while finding tatoos cool, would not one to get one because of the social stigma associated with it (tatoos are generally associated with criminality and bad behaviour). Temporary tatoos like the ones made with Henna are therefore quite popular over there, especially during the summer time. 

The Chicken Blood Tatoo is supposedly also a type of temporary tatoo. According to this urban legend, if you get tatooed with chicken blood instead of ink, you will have a special tatoo that will only be visible on certain occasions. Those occasions are: drinking alcohol, drinking hot drinks, taking a hot bath or exercising, that is basically anything that raises your body temperature. As your body temperature rises, the tatoo becomes visible but disappears as soon as your body temperature goes back to normal. Here's an often reposted story on Internet bulletin boards describing a girl with a Chicken Blood Tatoo.
I went to a bar one night to relax and drink. Then I saw this beautiful girl sitting alone in a corner. She was really beautiful and I was looking for an occasion to talk to her. Then she started drinking and it seemed that the picture of a rose was dimly appearing on the edge of her lips. I rubbed my eyes to make sure I was not drunk, but as she sipped on her drink one more time, I could clearly see the rose on the edge of her lips. The rose then disappears after a few seconds. In fact, she had a Chicken Blood Tatoo of a rose on the edge of her lips.
And that, my friends is the story of the Chicken Blood Tatoo. Do not try this at home, I'm no doctor but I'm pretty sure getting tatooed with Chicken Blood will give you all sorts of nasty infections.

On a side note, as you may have noticed, I got a domain name for this blog! Both daily-korean-stuff.blogspot.com and www.daily-korean-stuff.com should work now!
*Edit* It seems that Blogger has reset some of the settings since I've switched to the domain name, so let me know if you see a bug or anything fishy. Thanks! :)