Our presidents tell lies with impunity. The lies of Shin Jeong-ah and former presidential secretary Byeon Yang-kyun should not have been so surprising to us who have lived in floods of falsehoods. And it's not just politicians and phony Ph.D holders who tell lies. According to prosecutors' statistics from 13 years ago, Korea had 35 times more fraud cases per 100,000 of the population than Japan. At that time Korea reported 6,855 cases of people fleeing traffic accidents, another form of lying, while Japan had no similar incidents at all.

During my stint covering the police, case files were always piled up high on the desks of investigators. Pick up any document at random and you'd find a fraud case. A failed businessman who had dreamed of becoming a financial tycoon wrote in his memoirs that Korean swindlers were so good they could steal nuclear weapons from the Soviet Union. The Shin Jeong-ah mess indicates that our society has not changed much since then.

Shin lived behind masks because she knew that her livelihood depended on them. In Korea if you secure a diploma from a prominent university, you can enjoy advantages over others throughout your life, even if you are less talented and more lazy. Outside the house we might censure Shin, but once back home we urge our children to go for those lofty diplomas. It's not coincidental that Korea has more plastic surgery than any other country in the world in proportion to its population. Nor is it surprising that Korea is one of the world's biggest markets for cosmetics. A travel guide published by Newsweek described the people of Korea as walking the streets in quality clothing. No other country seemed to merit such a description. Somebody had figured it out -- in our way of life, what we are is not so important. Rather, we pay excessive attention to how others regard us.

In the end it's a problem of fundamentals. Sports plainly show what happens to castles built without strong foundations. In the Beijing Asian Games last year, professional Korean baseball players were defeated by Japanese amateurs. The reason the Korean players were outwardly professional but inferior to the amateurs lay in a difference in fundamental skills. Korean baseball players who have returned home after unsuccessful attempts in the American or Japanese leagues have unanimously confessed that they were inferior in basic skills.

In the FIFA U-17 World Cup Korea 2007, the Korean youth team was eliminated in the preliminary round despite having been given the biggest support in history. Not a single player equipped with excellent basic skills could be found. "The Korean league just moves too slow. That's why I only watch Britain's premier league," said a player who was said to be one of the top stars in the country in an interview before the tournament. That young player, I thought later, vividly reflected our way of admiring appearances without knowing the basics.

Sagakita High School, the winners of a miraculous victory in Japan's national high school baseball tournament this year, was the foil of foils among 4,081 participating schools. Sagakita had no exclusive ball field, no players dorm, no scholarships for outstanding players. The school had no way to attract top ball players. The height of the team averaged less than 170 cm, and the coach was a Japanese language teacher who had never even played college ball. Yet that team triumphed in just its second attempt at the tournament.

What were the secrets behind the miracle? None at all. Half of practice consisted of building up basic physical strength and training basic movements. They even skipped practice for a week during school exams. After being repeatedly asked for the secrets of success, the coach was said to have made this reply: "Be punctual. Be courteous. Study hard, too." His secret was nothing but making his team members abide by the basics as human beings, students and athletes.

Could we have a baseball team like that of Sagakita High School? How many days would a coach like that manage to survive in Korea? We all know the answers.