Precipitated by a scandal of a professor who worked in a highly coveted job with a forged curriculum vita (CV), many people of high achievement are placed in the turmoil of public verification of their CV. This verification is primarily focused on the authenticity of their diploma of their university education. Yoon Suk-wha, a famous theatrical actress, confessed that she never attended Ewha University, which was listed in her CV. Lee Chang-ha, Chung Dug-hee, and a few more celebrities who had been regarded as the best in their fields of activity admitted similar faultiness and resigned from their prominent positions. Each of the aforementioned celebrities has proven their talent and competency. For them, university education probably would have not helped much to better their work. For sure, no university education offers pure talent. They chose to fake a CV because they thought lying would get them ahead. Alas, nobody predicted the upcoming age of the Internet where nothing remains secret long, especially about the life of celebrities. Reflecting on the rarity of an event, it even became a news recently that a man with only a junior college diploma has gotten employed as a professor at a university. Why is it that in Korea CV forgery is such frequent occurence? Although faking a university diploma is not unique in Korea, it certainly tells something about Korean social psychology.

     First, it indicates that Koreans place higher human value on the diligence or effort than on ability or talent in evaluating a person. In Korea, children are always encouraged to put effort into their work and they are praised for their effort rather than for their talent and intelligence. Talent is a good thing to have but not to take pride in. Acceptance into those few prestigious universities tells, in addition to their intellectual ability, that this person is able to put a lot of effort into something he or she desires to achieve. People do not value talent only; they may admire those talented people, but do not pay much respect to them. Showing a university diploma or entry into the best college is indirect proof of diligence. Combinations of ability and attitude toward work and some talent make people of the highest quality. Second, not unrelated to the first though, Korean people tend to have the view of incremental psychology of people rather than the entity psychology of people. Incremental psychologists view human nature as changeable while entity psychologist views it as a fixed entity. Recent developments in cross-cultural psychology clearly show that East Asian people tend to espouse the incremental belief and Euro-American people espouse the entity belief.

     Due to folk belief in such human nature, people in East Asian countries are advised to take self-disciplinary practice throughout life. The mind is regarded as something that requires constant cultivation. Diploma forgery, including lying on a CV, is grounded on the psychologies of Korean people. It is unlikely to diminish in the future, as long as social competition runs as high as it does now. We need to divert our educational goals to make a better society. We need to instill heterogeneity into every aspect of society. Values in each domain of life need to be noted and educated replacing Korea's monolithic value system where only the top gets everything. I hope the current scandals of forging diplomas serve as a momentum to further diversify education.

#277 Editorial