Governments tell lies

By Nam Sang-so

Lies and more lies, everywhere. Yoon Chang-jung, the former government mouthpiece, keeps lying and Cheong Wa Dae does not seem innocent either, if the news reports are true.

Lies have power, often stronger than the truth. Any government knows that.

The biggest political lies I experienced in my childhood years were propaganda from the Nazis and the Imperial General Headquarters (IGH) of the Japanese military (daihonei) during the Pacific War.

“Nihon and Deutsch and Italia…,” we sang, “Let us be friends, hands in hands, together conquer the world….” So we danced holding hands with our classmates. It was called the Axis Alliance. I loved the dancing part as my partner was one of the best-dressed girls in class. Her big brown eyes shined, her black hair streamed in the wind and she smiled innocently when our eyes met. I know that was not a lie.

We believed the alliance would conquer the world and attempted to follow the discipline of the paramilitary organization of the Nazi Party ― Deutsches Jungvolk ― The League of German Youth.

Their motto, “Blood and Honor,” fittingly matched the Bushido spirit. Hitler and his cronies orchestrated what was called “the big lie.” No matter how big the lie is, people will believe it if repeated often enough and everyone tells lie sometimes, Hitler reasoned.

Japanese propaganda during the war was filled with lies. Almost all official announcements made by the IGH as part of the Supreme War Council were later found to be false. The Battle of Midway was the most important naval battle of the Pacific Campaign and the Japanese fleet was shamefully defeated but the IGH announced the reverse.

Similar deceptions were applied to the results of the New Guinea and Solomon Islands campaigns, the Battles of Saipan and the Philippine Sea and Leyte Gulf. The fake reports finally stopped when Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed.

The U.S. government is no exception. Lyndon B. Johnson told America the North Vietnamese had attacked a U.S. navy destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin incident. He lied. As a result, tens of thousands of Americans and millions of Vietnamese lost their lives in a no-win war, as historians testify rather belatedly.

A former president of the U.S. told America he “did not have sexual relations with that woman.” Two decades before this jaw-dropping joke, another U.S. president was caught in a web of lies. He lied about the Watergate scandal that came back to haunt him and forced him to resign from office.

On June 27, two days after the North’s invasion of the South in 1950, President Syngman Rhee evacuated, safely, from Seoul with his staff on a special train. As he escaped to Busan, the government radio asked Seoul citizens not to worry, but to just stay calm, help will come. It lied.

At 2:30 a.m. on June 28, the South Korean Army dynamited, without warning Seoul citizens, the only southern bridge across the Han River, which was filled with 4,000 refugees, to stop advancing communist forces.

Some 800 citizens died falling into the water and the South’s Fifth Army Division was also cut off from its retreat path. They gave up defending Seoul, and the North Korean tanks reached the broken bridge before noon of that day. History says so.

Governments and many politicians lie incessantly about war and politics. They falsify the cause of war, always blaming the opponent, and they lie about their own lies. Currently, the North Korean government excels of all candidates in the lying contest, closely followed by Japan’s Shinzo Abe government.

The writer is a retired architect/project analyst. His email address is sangsonam@gmail.com.