13/04/24 06:13:23.50
A Country of Liars by Kim Dae-joong
In every country there are crimes that uniquely reflect its society.
National Intelligence Service director-designate Kim Seung-kyu, in a lecture he gave late in May when he was justice minister, said: "The three representative crimes of our country are perjury, libel and fraud."
In simple comparison, not taking into account population ratio, South Korea saw 16 times as many perjury cases in 2003 than Japan, 39 times as many libel cases and 26 times as many instances of fraud.
That is extraordinarily high given Japan's population is three times our own.
The common denominator of the three crimes is lying; in short, we live in a country of liars. The prosecution devotes 70 percent of its work to handling the three crimes, the former justice minister said.
And because suspects lie so much, the indictment rate in fraud cases is 19.5 percent, in perjury 29 percent and in libel 43.1 percent.
"Internationally, too, there is a perception that South Korea's representative crime is fraud," Kim said, adding that recent major scandals show how rampant lying is in this country.
The prosecution is not free from responsibility, since there is a sense in which its ingrained attitude in dealing with suspects for libel, fraud and perjury has contributed to making the crimes the scourge they have become.
Lying is so common in our society because few recognize that it leads to crime. "What's wrong with telling a little lie?" they think.
And here the big problem is that men of power, rather than ordinary citizens, indulge in lying on a massive scale, to the point where it is regarded as a necessary means of survival in some circles.
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