A man died in Gwangju, South Korea, on Monday after choking on a piece of “live octopus” while eating a dish of san-nakji. The octopus in the delicacy isn’t actually alive but the animal is killed and sliced right before serving. The idea is that the nerves in its tentacles are still active causing the pieces to spontaneously wiggle. Video demo below. According to emergency responders, the man, aged 82, suffered a heart attack after choking on a piece of the twitching appendages. From CNN:
The dish has also previously made headlines, with local media reporting multiple cases over the years of diners dying after choking or asphyxiating on “live octopus.”
In perhaps the best-known case, dubbed the “octopus murder,” a South Korean man was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2012 for allegedly killing his girlfriend and claiming it was a san-nakji accident – before he was acquitted by the Supreme Court in 2013 for insufficient evidence.
