By Jon Huer
Korea Times Columnist

Some foreigners think Koreans do not take the matter of ``truth'' seriously. They point out the casual deception with prices at shops and the equally casual failure to live up to contracts. Often English teachers are forewarned about Korea's ``dishonesty.''

In America, being called a liar is about the worst personal insult one can endure. In an old Western called ``Shane,'' four people get killed over being called a liar. Indeed, Americans take the word seriously.

Does that mean Koreans lie more than Americans? Absolutely not.

Both Koreans and Americans lie, deceive, and act untruthfully. But the way they deal with untruth is different. Koreans lie and deceive as a matter of personal convenience, and Americans as a public philosophy.

The difference in style is like that between street crimes as opposed to corporate crimes. The latter is much more dangerous and serious because of their immensity, but the former gets all the publicity.

All lies and deception, indeed all untruths, are created because of our ``need'' to create them. The need to create them is always proportional to our self-interest. The greater our self-interest, the greater the need to deviate from truth, and vice versa.

By the same token, anyone who is completely free of self-interest, perhaps like Buddha or Jesus, only utters the truth and does justice. We believe this is so even when we disagree, as we often do, with their brands of truth.

Our self-interest thus produces lies; the strength of self-centeredness coincides with the strength of lies or untruth. In short, anything our self-interest desires requires a corresponding degree of lies.

Self-interest requires that we take what our hearts desire from others. We never develop self-interest for air, as it is freely available. It is a fact of life that what we want is always owned by somebody else.

Economic self-interest has to take the dollars that other people have; likewise, for politicians, it involves going after the votes that other people have; for popularity seekers, going after ratings, ticket sales and getting on the bestseller list; for academics, such as Ph.D. degree seekers, satisfying the professors who hold the key, and so on.

Whenever one wishes to realize the object of one's self-interest, one finds that the object is always in the power of somebody else. Generally, there are two ways one can get what somebody else owns: One is through force, and the other through deception.

As the world becomes more democratic, it tends to necessitate more lies, and we tend to rely primarily on advertisement, impression-management, political persuasion, and so forth, to get what we want. These are all lies, although perhaps not perjuries.

Here is the distinction between small lies, or ``petty'' lies, which is the Korean style of untruth, and big lies, or ``chronic'' lies, which is the American style of untruth.

Petty liars, the Korean kind, lie for a particular purpose and in a particular situation, such as cheating a foreign customer with a price tag or a taxi meter. Generally, petty lies take place on the street; chronic lies in the office or the Classroom, where they are produced and taught as an article of faith in the system. Korean liars do not actually believe in their lies; American liars do.

We can catch the one-time liars with a perjury threat, lie-detector test, or a simple show of contradiction. When caught, the one-time liar feel bad and is appropriately punished by society. Most lying in Korea is this form of deception and dishonesty, a garden variety of human trickery in the struggle for survival. When caught, the liar will likely suck his teeth in embarrassment and apologize.

Chronic lying is more diffused. First, it is a Game of Life and it's nearly impossible for us Americans to tell that what passes for ``normal'' behavior is actually a higher-level of elaborate untruth. Next, we, as voters, consumers, or whatever else, actually prefer falsehood over truth. In short, in America, we find lies and deceptions, when produced by professionals and repeatedly presented, quite pleasant and enjoyable. We even conduct contests on whose deceptions are the best in the form of ``best commercials'' shown during the most successful of all deceptions, the Super Bowl.

When an American businessman is driven by his self-interest of accumulating wealth, he can take someone else's money only through lying proportionally to the degree of his desire. When a writer wants to pen a bestseller, he must present untruth as truth to the reading public.

When a politician wants to realize the pinnacle of his self-interest, he must deceive the voters to get the largest amount of proxy power.

These are chronic deceptions because they come under various guises of culture, ideology and upbringing. If a college-bound youth wants to study ``marketing,'' we don't tell him that he is planning to major in ``deceptionology'' or ``untruthology.'' For every field of educational untruth, society gives its appropriate blessings and advisory counsel.

When a U.S. Senator comes on TV to talk about this policy or that proposal, most viewers fail to recognize that the speaker is a ``chronic liar'' who, unaware of it himself, lies to the public in his sleep. The moderator, on his part, has one eye on the guest and the other on the ratings meter. Under these circumstances, and against the overwhelming presence of self-interested scheming and plotting, truth stands no chance.

For Korea, its saving grace is that Koreans are still very rough-hewn, primeval, tribal players. ``Truth,'' ``Conscience,'' ``Shame,'' ``Honor,'' ``Disgrace,'' ``Humanity,'' and other such terms still carry strong resonance in the Korean heart. When foreigners catch them in small lies, they get red-faced and admit to their wrongdoing.

Few Koreans think about defending their lying actions with righteousness. When accused, they even kill themselves to defend their honor and dignity.

In the U.S., on the other hand, where deceptions are smooth and flowery, every accused person fights with tooth and nail to argue that he is innocent and his action justified. No publicly accused American ever kills himself to save his dignity or honor nowadays.

How long could Korea stay on the level of large innocence and small deceptions? Not very long. We now see classes offered to improve their self-presentations or self-deception, cultural adulations of professional liars, such as entertainers, and the gradual rise of self-interest as their god-given right and oracle.

Will Koreans also become smooth, unconscious, and self-deluding liars soon?

The writer can be contacted at jonhuer@hotmail.com. The opinions expressed and the observations described in these articles are strictly the writer's own and do not represent any official position of the University of Maryland University College or the USFK.