hideThis article has multiple issues. Please help or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these template messages)
The examples and perspective in this article may not represent a worldwide view of the subject. You may , discuss the issue on the talk page, or create a new article, as appropriate.(April 2021) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)
This article relies largely or entirely on a single source. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. Please help by introducing citations to additional sources. Find sources: – ···scholar·JSTOR(May 2021)
This article may be expanded with text translated from the corresponding article in Chinese. (July 2021) Click [show] for important translation instructions.
Machine translation like DeepL or Google Translate is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia.
Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 1,127 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization.
Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.
You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary Content in this edit is translated from the existing Chinese Wikipedia article at [[:zh:]]; see its history for attribution.
You should also add the template {{Translated page}} to the talk page.
This article may be expanded with text translated from the corresponding article in Japanese. (July 2021) Click [show] for important translation instructions.
Machine translation like DeepL or Google Translate is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia.
Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 2,618 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization.
Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.
You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary Content in this edit is translated from the existing Japanese Wikipedia article at [[:ja:]]; see its history for attribution.
You should also add the template {{Translated page}} to the talk page.
For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.
(Learn how and when to remove this template message)
Yeontan (Korean: 연탄) are coal briquettes used in East Asia for cooking and home heating. Made from a mixture of lignite coal dust and a gluing agent that kept the dust particles together,[1] they were a welcome alternative to firewood and natural coal partly because they came in a consistent, stackable size and shape. There are 5 standard sizes for yeontan, and the 2nd standard is widely used in households. The 2nd standard briquette is cylindrical in shape, weighs 3.5 kg, and is about 20 cm in height and 15 cm in diameter. The standard yeontan has 22 holes drilled into its top to facilitate steady, efficient burning, and a household typically used one to three briquettes per day in the winter. A new yeontan would sometimes be placed atop the current one when it was halfway burned, to continuously maintain the fire.
The same fire used for cooking also served to heat the house, through a Korean radiant underfloor heating system called ondol.
History[]
Introduced to Korea from Japan in the 1920s, yeontan rose in popularity following the Korean War. By 1988, 78% of Korean households used yeontan, but this fell to 33% by 1993 as people switched to oil and gas boilers, and was estimated to be used by just 2% of households by 2001.[1] The boilers reduced the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning, which was a major cause of death in coal-heated houses.
In recent years amid South Korea's suicide epidemic, yeontan has seen use as a method of suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning.