[Opinion] Lying

Sissela Bok is an ethicist and philosopher from the United States. In her book, Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private life, written in 1978, she divides lies into 11 types. She first mentions the white lie, which is a falsehood not meant to injure anyone, like giving a placebo. She then continues by discussing making excuses, lying to save others from dangerous situations, lying as a reaction against malicious liars, lying for the protection of friends, and deceptive social science research.

She raises several questions: Is it right for a doctor to tell a lie to diminish the fear and anxiety of a patient? Is it moral for a professor to praise unsuccessful students as having a great talent when writing recommendations? Is it okay for a reporter to tell a falsehood in order to divulge corruption? These questions show us the extent to which lying is connected with our everyday lives.

One of the more serious lies that Bok mentions is deceptive acts of public officials. In 1960, Americans felt serious betrayal by their president, Dwight Eisenhower, after discovering he had told an untruth regarding the U-2 spy plane incident. Their frustration was acute, because at that time Americans strongly trusted their president. Later, following the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal, the American people’s confidence in their government’s honesty dropped sharply. According to a survey conducted in 1975, 69 percent of Americans believed that their political leaders continued to lie about things. Amid such brewing distrust of the government, Richard Nixon finally became the first president of the United States to leave office due to lying. Since then, it has been rare to see any tolerance of liar politicians in America.

How about in South Korea? We have been quite tolerant of public officials’ lying. Despite the fact that President Lee Seung-man, during the Korea War, did not keep a promise that he would never give up the Seoul area, he ruled the country for 10 more years. In addition, even though General Park Chung-hee broke a public pledge to transfer the reins of government to civilian leaders, he lengthened his tenure by as many as 18 years. It is also hard to count the number of groundless public revelations made by politicians. However, it is fortunate that the amount of effort going into investigating the authenticity of their claims has been increasing recently. Bok said that the worst lying is premeditated lying. We hope our society become a place where such lying is identified and culled out.

Lee Jae-kyeong, Editorial Writer, Journalism Professor of Ewha Woman’s University, jklee@ewha.ac.kr