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Soothsayer' blogger feels the heat Professor Chin Jun Kwan smiles at the idea. "He was called 'the president' on the internet," he recalls. A left-wing academic who has long railed at South Korean governments of all stripes, Chin relishes the success, however fleeting, of another anti-establishment figure. The 'presidency' of Park Dae-sung was indeed something to behold. An unemployed, self-taught financial soothsayer, armed with little more than an internet account and a pile of text books, had, as the credit crunch took hold last year, risen to extraordinary prominence in this internet-obsessed country. Writing as Minerva (he named his online alter-ego for the Roman goddess of wisdom), Park accurately predicted the fall of the US investment bank Lehmann Brothers, and collapse in the value of the South Korean currency, the won. Woven into the economics was a caustic dose of politics – scathing criticism of President Lee Myun-bak and his administration...