Park Administration Funded Right Wing Groups

President Park's administration reportedly ordered the Federation of Korean Industries to fund conservative groups for the past three years. Over $6 million were gathered from Samsung, the Hyundai Motor Company, SK and LG.

The Hankyoreh: Nearly $6 million flowed from chaebol to far right groups over three years

President Park is probably going through a mental breakdown., The breaking point will probably be the Constitutional Court decision on her impeachment, Then most normal people would go through a period of regret, guilt, remorse, and consider ways to escape.

Israel To Decriminalize Recreational Marijuana

Israel, a leader in medical marijuana research and marijuana patents, along with Britain, is taking steps to decriminalize recreational marijuana. Those caught will now be fined.

CNN: Israel takes steps to decriminalize marijuana use

All those Koreans spending all that money abroad. A lot of young people going to the US, Canada, Spain, Portugal, Amsterdam, Thailand, Cambodia., Laos, and other countries for ganja. Wonder if Korea has got even one patent for medical marijuana. It seems everyone else has patents.

All these brainwashed people think marijuana users are addicts and criminals. People use it because they have pain, emotional or physical, in most cases both, and most aren't aware they are in pain.

Many people try it and feel nothing special. Some try it and feel good, become more satisfied with life, more self aware, things become more enjoyable. more empathetic and other things.

To borrow from Scientific American -

"The English author Aldous Huxley believed that the brain acts as a “reducing valve” that constrains conscious awareness, with mescaline and other hallucinogens inducing psychedelic effects by inhibiting this filtering mechanism."

Maybe marijuana does the same thing. The brain tries to make sense of the world and is constrained by all the general assumptions that the brain has made about the world. It seems to release some of these "bonds" or "constraints", and give a broader perspective of the world and self.

Scientific American: Do Psychedelics Expand the Mind by Reducing Brain Activity?

Science Daily: Answers to how our brains make meaning, with the help of LSD

Why do people call it being high? Maybe it is because their spirits were lifted up closer to Heaven? :)

Scientists have discovered a new form of matter - Time Crystals!

Science Daily: Scientists unveil new form of matter: Time crystals

Will Canada Legalize Recreation Marijuana In 2017? Experts Say Yes.

Experts think that Canada will legalize recreational marijuana in 2017. It was a campaign promise of Prime Minister Trudeau, and medicinal marijuana is already legal in Canada.

Benzinga: When Will Canada Legalize Weed? Experts Weigh In

Park Administration Ordered Funding Of Right Wing Groups

According to TV news, Lee Seung-chul, Vice Chairman of the Federation of Korean Industries (FKI), testified that President Park's administration ordered the funding of ten right wing groups.

There have been very outspoken and aggressive conservative right wing groups at demonstrations, government offices, parliament, and other places. For a long time, it was rumored that the groups were funded by and received orders from the Park administration. The rumors turned out to be true., These right wing groups were fanatical and sometimes violent. They were paid demonstrators.

According to Vice Chairman Lee, FKI did not have enough funds, so he had to ask the federation members for an additional $3 million annually in order to fund these groups.

No articles in the press on this topic yet.

Medical Marijuana Legalized Unanimously By German Parliament

Legislation legalizing the use of medicinal marijuana was just passed unanimously by the German parliament. The bill becomes effective March 1. 2017.

CNN: Germany becomes latest country to OK medical marijuana legalization


Korea locked up 313 drug users and arrested around 1,800 last year, according to TV news. Most other countries are releasing them.

CNN: Obama cuts sentences of hundreds of drug offenders

Korea Demonstrations - 13th Week

Over 350,000 in Seoul and around the country braved freezing snow to participate in the 13th week of demonstrations against President Park's abuses.

There are no demonstrations planned for next weekend, since it is the Lunar New Year Holidays, which is like Christmas for Koreans, Japanese, Chinese, Taiwanese and muc of Southeast Asia, a time for families to gather.

If Lee Jae-young is convicted of bribery, then Samsung would have to pay penalties to many countries that have laws against foreign corruption. Maybe it would be better to lock them up on other charges, overlook bribery. Bribery is so hard to prove, when the main suspect didn't receive any bribes directly, but through companies, or foundations and the assets are in other people's names.

President Park Scandal Arrest List Update

Four more people, listed below just arrested recently;

Mr. Kim Ki-choon        (former Chief Presidential Secretary)
Ms. Cho Yoon-sun       (Minister of Culture and Sports)
Ms. Kim Kyung-sook   (Ewha U., Dean of Science and Industry Convergence College)
Ms. Lee  In-sung        (Ewha University, Professor)

Those arrested so far in the scandal are listed below;

Ms. Choi Soon-sil       (President Park's confidante)
Mr. Cha Eun-taek       (former Director of Creative Convergence Center)
Mr. An Chong-bum    (former Senior Presidential Secretary)
Mr. Jeong Ho-seong   (former Presidential Secretary)
Ms. Choi Si-ho           (niece of Ms. Choi Soon-sil)
Mr Kim Jong              (former Vice Minister of Culture)
Mr. Moon Hyung-pyo  (former Minister of Health)

Mr. Kim Jin-soo          (former Presidential Secretary for Health)

Mr. Kim Jong-deok     (former Minister of Culture)

Mr. Chung Gwang-ju   (former Vice Minister of Culture)

Mr. Shin Dong-chul     (former Presidential Secretary)

Mr. Song Sung-gak     (former Head of Korea Creative Content Agency)

Mr Ryu Cheol-gyun     (Ewha University Professor)

Mr. Nam Gung-gon     (former Ewha University, Dean of Admissions)

Those indicted with indifference (not arrested yet) are listed below;

Mr. Cho Won-dong    (former Senior Presidential Secretary for Economic Affairs)

Lee Jae-yong            (Samsung Vice Chairman)

Choi Gee-sung          (Samsung, Vice Chairman Future Strategy Office)

Jang Choong-gi         (Samsung, President Future Strategy Office)

Park Sang-jin             (Samsung Electronics, President for External Affairs)

Mr. Kim Ki-choon and Ms. Cho Yoon-sun were arrested and indicted for blacklisting artists and other people (abuse of power, perjury, etc.).

Korea Herald: Kim Ki-choon, Cho Yoon-sun detained

Korea Times: Culture minister, ex-presidential chief of staff arrested over blacklist of 'left-leaning' artists 

Yonhap News: S. Korea's culture minister arrested over blacklist of cultural figures 

For a long time, many though right wing groups were backed and given directions by the Park Administration. This was just proven true and Minister Cho Yoon-sun was behind it, most likely after receiving directions from President Park. 

The Hankyoreh: Culture Minister orchestrated right-wing demonstrations when serving as Blue House Senior Secretary 

Expect even more arrests and indictments in the coming weeks!

Best Place To Buy In Seoul - Butane Gas

The Cheongnyangri Fruit and Vegetable Market is the cheapest place to buy many things, including butane gas canisters.



The general grocery stores sell a butane gas cans for 3,000 won per four can pack. Most places charge more than 4,000 won for a four can pack. They also sell butter at the cheapest prices. I bought a 450 gram packet of Seoul Milk Butter for 7,000 won. The owner told me that prices were just raised, so it will cost more next time.

Butane Gas Canister 4-Pack

Butter (middle shelf)

The market is also the best place to buy fruits and vegetables, but you should shop around for the best buys and stores. Most places do not accept credit cards. Some do and charge 10% extra. Some of the larger stores accept credit cards without extra charges. The stores wholesale, and also retail on the side. If they do not accept credit cards, they can cut out the VAT, credit card processing fee, and reduce margins.

I bought a box of 16 apples (medium size, much bigger than at Home Plus, Emart and other stores) for 15,000 won from this store.

At the west end of the market, there are stores that sell meat, mushrooms, ginseng, nuts, seeds, grains and other foodstuffs at prices much cheaper than discount stores.

I also bought a 10 kilogram box of sweet potatoes nearby for 20,000 won. Really good quality.

Some stores are great, some are rip offs. So, shop around.

Samsung Vice-Chairman Lee Jae-young Indicted

The Special Independent Prosecutor's spokesman just announced that an arrest warrant and indictment were submitted to the courts for Lee Jae-young on bribery, embezzlement, and perjury charges. Three other Samsung presidents Choi Ji-sung, Jang Chung-gi, and Park Sang-jin were also indicted. The indictment hearings will be held on January 18, 2017.

New York Times:  South Korea Prosecutor Seeks Arrest of Samsung Group Leader in Bribery Case

Korea Demonstrations - 12th Week

This week's demonstrations were in remembrance of Jung Won, the Buddhist monk who immolated himself last week in protest and died a few days later, and Park Jong-cheol, a student who died while being water boarded to give up the whereabouts of a student protest leader 30 years ago on January 14, 1987. His death started nationwide protests which ended the reign of military generals posing as Korean Presidents.

TV news and other media are only giving airtime to pro-Park protests. There were almost no coverage of the anti-Park demonstrators, but there were a lot of coverage of the pro-Park protesters. Due to minus 10 degrees Celsius temperatures, both groups had much smaller numbers of protesters.

CBS News: Monk burns to death protesting deal on WWII sex slaves

New York Times: SEOUL STUDENT'S TORTURE DEATH CHANGES POLITICAL LANDSCAPE

Joongang Daily News: Eye witness speaks on Park Jong-cheol case

Korea Times: Protesters demand President's ouster in 12th weekly anti-president rally 

Updated - List Of Arrested In President Park Scandal

Those arrested so far in the scandal are listed below;

Ms. Choi Soon-sil       (President Park's confidante)
Mr. Cha Eun-taek       (former Director of Creative Convergence Center)
Mr. An Chong-bum    (former Senior Presidential Secretary)
Mr. Jeong Ho-seong   (former Presidential Secretary)
Ms. Choi Si-ho           (niece of Ms. Choi Soon-sil)
Mr Kim Jong             (former Vice Minister of Culture)
Mr. Cho Won-dong    (former Senior Presidential Secretary for Economic Affairs)

Mr. Moon Hyung-pyo (former Minister of Health)
Mr. Kim Jin-soo         (former Presidential Secretary for Health)
Mr. Kim Jong-deok    (former Minister of Culture)
Mr. Chung Gwang-ju  (former Vice Minister of Culture)
Mr. Shin Dong-chul    (former Presidential Secretary)
Mr. Song Sung-gak    (former Head of Korea Creative Content Agency)
Mr Ryu Cheol-gyun    (Ewha University Professor)
Mr. Nam Gung-gon    (former Ewha University Admissions Dept. Head))

For details on some of their crimes, please read the following articles. 

Joongang Daily News: Kim blacklisted liberal artists

The Hankyoreh: Prosecutors say there are “reams of evidence” 

Many more arrests are expected in the coming weeks!

Dissonance Therapy For Eating Disorders

Stress and pain can cause eating disorders. So can cognitive dissonance about beauty and health. Now, they are successfully treating people with dissonance therapy!

Science Daily: Research reveals help for eating disorder patients

Korea Protests - Week 11

The slogan for this week's demonstrations is "Come down Park. Come up Sewol Ferry".
January 10 will mark the 1,000th day of the Sewol Ferry sinking and the ship has yet to be salvaged from the bottom of the ocean.

Gwanghwamun Plaza at 6:00 pm

The weather is very mild. There should be a big crowd tonight.

Gwanghwamun Plaza at 7:00 pm

Protest organizers say around 500,000 have participated in Seoul. There should be a few hundred thousand more people before it ends.

Post Truth Politics

Koreans are appalled at all the lying being done by President Park and her associates. Some of the lying is to avoid jail and delay the court process, but most seem to be post truths trying to rally her supporters.

Post truths are opinions that are aimed at emotion (which is the main factor in decision making), even though they may be false or untrue.

The Saenuri Party has done this for decades. Trump did it. To these people, if lying is beneficial to them, they will lie.

I hope the everyone reads up on post truths and how emotions influence voter decisions more than facts.

Wikipedia: Post-truth politics

The Guardian: Broadcast news is losing its balance in the post-truth era

President Park's post truths are detailed in this next article;

Joongang Daily News: Some serious self-deception 

By stating that North Korea was behind the candlelight demonstrations and other lies, President Park is trying to stir up the fear of North Korea and communism. This works well with Koreans in their 60s and above who lived through the Korean War and military dictator Park's propoganda. That is why President Park's approval rating has risen to 10%. Remember the days of dictatorship? Time and Newsweek with sections blacked out. Long hair was illegal as were mini-skirts. People were framed as spies. Curfew. Martial law. Torture. The good ole days.

There are even TV commentators raging about the opposition trying to stir up indignation and other emotions. Nowadays, they are lying low, but elections are coming up and they will be out in full force. I used to get very frustrated watching all this and knowing, but now, it is starting to get interesting.

The following is a very informative article on President Park and corruption in Korea.

New York Times: As Scandal Roils South Korea, Fingers Point to Mixing of Politics and Business

Korean Intelligence Implicated Again In Domestic Espionage

The most interesting piece of news on TV was that the Special Independent Prosecutor carried out search warrants and from the phones that were confiscated, they managed to find out that people in the Ministry of Culture worked together with the Korean intelligence in making and updating the blacklist. Korean intelligence agency caught red handed again! They have been doing this for decades and still get away with it.

There is evidence that Korean intelligence spied on the head of the Supreme Court, a judge or prosecutor (I forget), and now the entire cultural and arts industries (movies, writers, TV, cable, theater, artists, dancers, musicians, etc.).

Another news flash. The Special Independent Prosecutor just announced that they have evidence that Korean intelligence spied on the National Pension Service to find out committee meeting results, political preferences, and how they would vote on the Samsung merger. The Special Prosecutor said that they found instant phone messages with Korean intelligence officials on ex-Presidential Secretary Ahn Jong-bom's phone and related notes in his notebook. They had this information for a couple of weeks. I think they are releasing this information now in retaliation for President Park's statements to the press, yesterday, claiming innocence. The Special Prosecutor also stated that ex-Presidential Secretary Ahn's notes also show that President Park asked Samsung's Lee Jae-yong, and the chairmen of Hanhwa and SK to donate money to various foundations under Choi Soon-sil's control. There is testimony that President Park raged at Samsung's Lee Jae-yong during a meeting for not donating to the foundations as he had promised ten months earlier, and asked that he donate about $8 million. In the same meeting, President Park said that she hoped that Samsung's merger would be completed during her term in office. Samsung paid $9 million promptly.

Joongang Daily News: Spy agency’s endless abuse of power 

Finland Giving Away Free Money Emulating Seoul Mayor Park Won-sun

Finland is giving about $500 a month to 2,000 unemployed as an experiment into Universal Basic Income. Seoul Mayor Park Won-sun introduced a watered downed version where they give a few hundred dollars a month for a few months to young unemployed, so that they can use the money to find jobs or get training. He tried to do more, but the Park administration opposed him, took him to court and other things.

Mayor Park has tried many other good solutions to solve many problems. All the time, the ruling party and President Park have attacked his policies and character. Why? The ruling Saenuri Party seems to prefer the cognitively dissonant and Mayor Park is certainly not one of those.

Very few articles in the media have been favorable to any of Mayor Park's policies and all have repeated the Saenuri Party's criticism of his policies as leftist and populist. His popularity rating for Presidential candidate is down there at 4% with Ahn Chul-soo, another good person. In my opinion, they receive a lot of bad press and flak, so the polls are sort of biased. They both led the polls at times in years past, but then were blasted by the media.

Business Insider: Finland just launched an experiment giving 2,000 people free money until 2019

Mayor Park has managed to pay off 6-7 billion dollars of debt incurred by the previous mayor's foolish construction projects and disastrous policies. President Park's administration managed to rack up the fastest rate of debt among developed countries. Where did all the money go? To big business? To President Park's associates?

Korea Herald: South Korea has fastest growing government debt in G-20

Metaphysics 201

Matter = Energy = Life = Thought = Knowledge ?

Is there more? Hmm... Structure, data, or logic could fall under knowledge.

What about time or change? Good question. Maybe time or change is the backdrop or medium against which the knowledge-matter universe is played out?

If time is forwards for matter and backwards for anti-matter, why is that? Do anti-matter and matter repel each other? Or do they just fall away down different slopes due to some force? Or is it like nothing or empty space, just a figment of the imagination? That sounds good. Just as there is no such thing as empty space, there can be no universe without time. Maybe with anti-matter going in a negative direction and matter in a positive direction?

For the uninformed, empty space and nothing are abstract concepts. You cannot make empty space or nothing. As soon as you make it, it is something.

Why do matter and anti-matter give off energy when they combine? Seems like they should just disappear. Could be something like ripples. If an opposite explosion happened in the anti-matter world, then it would cancel out to zero.

Physicists theorize that everything in the physical world emerges from vibrations. Do thoughts emerge from vibrations? Does knowledge emerge from vibrations? Knowledge emerges from assumptions made on experience. Albeit, experiences based on the "real" world which could be comprised of strings or vibrations. Where do thoughts emerge from? If they were only for survival in the beginning, why evolve so far past the point of just survival, in such a short time?

Thoughts - Possible to have many simultaneously, conscious and unconscious. Are emotions thoughts? Is determination a thought or emotion? Gimme some time on this. Remember thinking about this before. Thought generated by the body and environment vs. other thoughts (curiousness, conscience, boredom, God, etc.).

Consciousness - Maybe we run a subroutine of conscious and unconscious thoughts. We are conscious of the last part of the subroutine where we pause to add and delete parts of the routine. The subroutine is really fast and we just think we have many thoughts at once. And like in a movie with frames, these frames create the illusion of consciousness. Seems unlikely, but who knows. Can't make a computer do this yet, but the computer doesn't have mirror neurons and not as complicated as the human brain and organs.

Anyways, energy drives life, but what drives intelligence? What made emotions evolve? What drives the quest for knowledge and good?

Back to the real world -

If Korea were run like Startrek, then Dr. McCoy would have ordered a psychiatric exam and had Captain Kirk locked up in an asylum. Seriously, she could be a danger to herself.