A Question That Begins with the Blue House Site
Can we know what lies ahead for a human being? I begin this question with the stories surrounding Myung Tae-kyun and Kim Keon-hee. According to an account that circulated, Myung said that the peaks of Bukhansan and Baegaksan behind the Blue House looked like a cow turning its back. He allegedly called it the shape of betrayal and warned that anyone who entered the site would be betrayed and die. In short, he declared the Blue House site inauspicious.
I cannot state with certainty who said exactly what or whose words Kim Keon-hee believed. I do not know whether it was Myung Tae-kyun, Cheongong, or Geonjin Beopsa. But if these reports and claims are assumed to be true, they amount to a story in which geomantic superstition influenced Yoon Suk Yeol’s refusal to move into the Blue House.
Let me give my conclusion first. No one can prophesy even one minute ahead or one second into your future. No person in this world can exercise clairvoyance about you.
When Conditional Prophecy Moves State Affairs
The statement “You will die if you enter the Blue House” is a conditional prophecy. It says that something will happen in our future. I do not know whether the claims that Myung’s predictions strongly influenced state affairs are true. But suppose they are. What examples follow?
During a visit to Cambodia, Kim Keon-hee was reportedly scheduled to visit Angkor Wat, a Buddhist heritage site. Instead, she was photographed holding a sick child from a poor household. I ask how we would feel if the president of another country or a presidential spouse came to Korea and posed while holding a sick child in a poor neighborhood. I regard that as a diplomatically catastrophic act that defies common sense. A story attached to this schedule change says Myung had a bad dream the previous night and called to warn, “Do not take the plane tomorrow. I think it will crash.” The claim is that the Angkor Wat visit was canceled or postponed because she accepted his words.
I raise the same suspicion about the trip to pay respects at Queen Elizabeth’s funeral: they traveled all the way there, did not attend the main event, and only signed a condolence book. Could someone have said, “Your fortune will be bad if you attend; misfortune awaits you”? Again, I am not declaring this a verified fact. I am following the allegation that a fortune-teller’s judgment of good and bad luck lay behind decisions that were otherwise hard to understand.
The First Lady’s Fortune and the Blind Warrior
A fortune-teller claims to read good and bad fortune and speaks about the future. Whether that person is Myung Tae-kyun, Cheongong, Geonjin Beopsa, or anyone else, the problem is the same if he says, “This will be bad for you,” and a powerful person follows the instruction. In the story that circulated, Myung allegedly told Kim that her fortune destined her to be first lady, while her husband Yoon did not possess a presidential fortune.
He is also said to have used the analogy of a seated shaman and a blind warrior. The warrior cannot see but can carry another person, while the shaman on his back cannot walk but can tell him which way to go. Kim may have thought, “At last, someone recognizes me,” and taken an immediate liking to him. A horoscope, physiognomy, geomancy, and dreams gather into one structure that captures a ruler.
None of this is entirely new. It extends what fortune shops fronted by some “bodhisattva,” “boy spirit,” or “general,” as well as shamans and priests of the past, have long done. It is very traditional, yet in the twenty-first century those who know better recognize it as superstition. If none of these prophecies can reveal even an inch or one second of the future, why are they still sold, still believed, and spared proper criticism?
When an Ordinary Person’s Superstition Seizes Power
If Kim believes these things and falls hard for Myung’s claim that he is good at them, blinders cover her eyes. She calls him “Teacher” and becomes ready to believe him even if he says red beans can make meju. Myung is not a supernatural being but one ordinary person among countless others. The difference is that sitting beside a presidential couple turns his influence into an affair of state.
Korea has countless fortune shops and countless customers. Among ordinary people who believe superstition, write the character for “king” on a palm, or attach magical meaning to signs, one pair simply became president and presidential spouse. Then declarations of auspiciousness and misfortune swing state affairs around, and the whole country becomes a total mess.
I also mention what followed the Itaewon disaster: the mourning ribbon was worn backward so its letters could not be seen, while the joint altar omitted each victim’s portrait and name and assembled them anonymously. Why were such incomprehensible things done? I say I have seen superstition lurking behind actions that otherwise resist explanation. Now let us put the question more directly. Is prophecy possible or impossible?
The Objection That Buddhism Has Prophecy Too
Someone may object, “Doesn’t Buddhism also have prophecies?” Tanheo is a prominent example. I do not want to attach an honorific automatically to someone I do not respect, so I call him “the monk Tanheo” here, just as I say the monks Seongcheol and Jaseung. It identifies the person’s institutional status.
Once claims spread that Tanheo prophesied Korea’s future, people imagine that knowledge of the I Ching or divination reveals the future. Yet he could not prophesy even one second of your future, much less Korea’s. Does the prophet know when an active volcano on Baekdusan will erupt, whether a meteor will strike Earth, or whether a giant earthquake will collapse a nuclear power station?
We cannot even state tomorrow’s weather with certainty. A forecast can give a ninety-percent chance of rain and no rain may fall; rain predicted to be light may become heavy. Weather and the world are complex systems, and we cannot measure every variable.
We can examine data and predict a high probability of rain in a region during a particular period. But that is probabilistic prediction, not prophecy. If we cannot state the weather with certainty despite all its variables, how can anyone make a categorical statement about a human life?
Prediction and Prophecy Are Different
I do not reject prediction itself. People must predict in order to prepare for tomorrow. We formed hypotheses, experimented, accumulated experience, and predicted; that is how we launched missiles, reached the Moon, and built the internet. What is scientifically tested and put to use is prediction, not prophecy.
The difference lies in evidence and verification. We must observe whether the guess that dark clouds bring rain is true, determine whether a causal relationship exists, and test it through experiments and statistics. At minimum, there must be probabilistic evidence. That process separates sound claims from the countless guesses that prove wrong.
But no verified causal relation bridges the claim that a Baegaksan peak resembles a cow turning away, that this makes it an image of betrayal, and that betrayal will therefore befall whoever occupies the site. It is merely a human guess that looks plausible. In a densely interconnected world, one cannot declare “I prophesy” without evidence.
A Fraud on the Public Built Around Sarira
You may think I go too far when I call a monk’s words the words of a con artist. I do not. When the monk Seongcheol died, claims spread that glittering sarira emerged and proved his attainment. I call that fraud. A dead person leaves a corpse and bones; something glittering on them does not become mysterious proof of practice.
If someone manipulated the object, that is even more reason not to be fooled. My criticism is that the Jogye Order, presented as the largest organization in Korean Buddhism, committed fraud against the public. I also point out that after Jaseung’s death, talk about whether sarira had appeared briefly surfaced and then vanished. Sarira is not sacred, mysterious, or proof of attainment. Even the Buddha’s sarira, stated plainly as I see it, is the bone of a dead body.
I suddenly turn to sarira and Buddhist criticism because I want to ask who grants immunity to prophets. Buddhists believe that the monk Tanheo prophesied, while monks at temples read horoscopes and faces, discuss geomancy and divination, and inspect palms. Can a Buddhism that promotes miraculous places and miraculous sarira condemn fortune shops forcefully? How could it, when the practice it should criticize is what its own institutions do?
Why Schools Do Not Criticize Superstition
Even in 2025, in the twenty-first century, many people believe in prophecy because nobody taught them to question it critically. Six years of elementary school, three years of middle school, three years of high school, and four years of university still do not teach that horoscopes, physiognomy, and divination are false.
Korean education asks students to memorize and write the answer desired by the examiner. There is no time to doubt a lesson or a book and think deeply. It does not ask whether prophecy is possible, whether an afterlife exists, or why lies like these overflow. When large religious populations speak of gods, bodhisattvas, and Maitreya, a textbook that confronts those claims directly can be treated as religious persecution.
As a result, people use phones, television, film, and YouTube—the products of science—while religion continues to spoon absurd superstition into their mouths. Even discussions of evolution and creationism produce claims that creationism cannot be refuted. Critical philosophy aimed at leaving superstition behind disappears while people merely consume the products of science.
A Prophet Who Cannot Know His Own Future
Put Tanheo’s prophecies and Myung’s clairvoyance before the same question. If Myung could know his own future, would he have chosen conduct that led toward prison, public scandal, and abuse? He does not know his own future, yet says a dream tonight reveals that the plane Kim will board tomorrow may crash.
Blinders cover his eyes too. He deceives himself with the thoughts, “My dream will reveal someone else’s future. I possess clairvoyance.” People also deceive themselves by saying, “I met God,” “I had a mystical experience,” or “I receive power from the universe.” The beliefs of deceiver and deceived interlock.
Kim wants to believe in a mystery that reveals tomorrow, and Myung wants to believe he possesses foresight. Each person’s desire strengthens the other’s blinders. But a desire to believe creates neither causation nor evidence.
A Worldview in Which Stars Rise for Humans
We should consider how different a human and an ant are on the scale of the universe. Suppose someone says, “An ominous star has risen, so there will be drought next year,” or “An auspicious star has appeared, so a great ruler will be born.” I cannot say that the stars and human beings have absolutely no relationship, because we live in an interrelated world. But interrelation is entirely different from a claim that a star announces human fortune.
The idea that stars send special signals to humans and the universe revolves around humanity is human—all too human. Once we grasped the universe’s vastness, the old worldview placing Earth and humanity at the center was shattered. In this universe, a human is dust upon dust. We assume ominous stars do not rise for bacteria, yet imagine that the stars send signs for us.
The worldview in which a god made the universe for people and records and judges every human good and evil is also an imagination centered on a small Earth. In the past, the small visible world appeared to be everything, and the Sun, Moon, and stars seemed to circle us. Now we know how tiny the human beings on Earth are within a universe approaching infinity.
Humans belong to nature and stand within the evolutionary process alongside ants, cockroaches, dogs, and monkeys. Beneath the belief that my future can be divined lies the conviction that humans are uniquely important and that nature and the universe operate for us.
Do Not Mistake a Guess for Causation
Consider the claims that a certain palm line means longevity, while another promises wealth or intelligence. People in the past may have seen a superficial association and guessed, “Perhaps a hand shaped this way means a long life.” But an untested guess is, to put it roughly, bullshit. That bullshit is packaged as divination and extended into a prophecy about Korea’s future.
An awakened person does not prophesy your future. An enlightened person does not prophesy. Such a person knows that only prediction is available and proceeds through hypotheses, observation, and experiment. He accepts that a prediction may fail and changes it when new evidence appears.
Just as we ask about dark clouds and rain, we must ask whether a causal relationship really connects a mountain’s shape with betrayal. Can it be observed repeatedly? Are there counterexamples? Are there statistics? The moment someone speaks of the future with certainty despite having no evidence, prediction turns into prophecy and fraud.
The conclusion is simple but weighty. Humans should make probabilistic predictions to plan and prepare. But we must not entrust power—or permit state affairs to be shaken—by someone who claims certainty even one second into the future.
Korean Society Made These People
People are busy surviving. They do not have much time to examine whether prophecy, an afterlife, gods, bodhisattvas, supernatural powers, souls, merit, or karma exist. Meanwhile religion insists, “They exist.” It sells God, angels, hell, the end times, and the decline of the Dharma. I answer, “What decline of the Dharma? This is a world filled with lies.”
I grant no immunity to an insurrection ringleader who threw the country into disorder and ruin. But another perspective must also be seen. Why do such people arise in twenty-first-century Korea? This is the present condition of Korean education and the bare face of Korean society. Most religious people believe superstition, and many nonreligious people also live behind layers of blinders.
Even those who usually disbelieve may reach for God, Jesus, the Buddha, or something mystical when crisis, hardship, and death arrive. They have repeatedly heard that life and death possess a mysterious answer and have never questioned the claim critically. In a moment of desperation, they grab the story they once heard.
Korean society raised Kim Keon-hee, Yoon Suk Yeol, and Myung Tae-kyun. Con artists swarm under the names of religion and shamanism, and even they may not realize that their conduct is fraudulent. It is a society in which nobody speaks plainly of fraud when the Jogye Order invokes sarira over Seongcheol’s corpse. New religious cults flourish because established religions are no different at the point where both command belief in superstition. They share the same structure of selling an afterlife, heaven and hell, souls, and mystery.
From Other People’s Blinders to My Own
It is therefore not enough to stare only at Kim and Myung and criticize them. Countless people live in the belief that “something extraordinary must exist” without knowing what superstition is. If you also believe what you have neither observed nor known, can you simply declare that only they are foolish?
To become liberated again and again, I must observe myself again and again. I must look back and ask whether I too have fallen hard for some absurd belief or idea and begun making absurd claims. It is difficult work, but this repeated turning back toward oneself is the Buddhism I mean.
Do not stop after looking at Myung and saying, “That man has blinders on and holds absurd beliefs.” Ask what I believe, what standard guides my life, and whether that standard is right. Have I observed the whole world and learned everything? What do I know completely? Then how could I prophesy the future?
There is no such thing as prophecy. I have spoken about prophecy today, but at a larger scale this is a call to examine critically the blinders and delusions around me, the image and mental construct I hold, and what has colored my life. May you notice the blinders over your own eyes and become liberated. May you attain Buddhahood.
This article was edited by AI solely from the supplied video captions and description. No external sources were used.