Another senior commander explained that in today’s world, where most of the soldiers have grown up as an only child or the only son and thus are often accustomed to a pampered childhood, a new approach to discipline is inevitable. “When more than 40 percent of the draftees are the only son and don’t like the idea of having to live with a bunch of guys under the same rules, we need a tailor-made approach to get each soldier combat-ready,” said the officer, adding that the spread of the Internet has made officers extremely cautious about handing out punishments.
What is also different is how soldiers follow orders. Nowadays, compared to the past, the draftees are not shy about asking a lot of questions. One wrote to Yeo arguing that running in the early morning fog is bad for one’s health. The lieutenant colonel could have dismissed the letter as a petty complaint by someone who maybe needed some heavy-duty military discipline. Instead, Yeo got the battalion’s medical officer to explain to his soldiers that the early morning runs were not exposing anyone to any health risk.
I'm a pacifist, am no fan of conscription, and am disturbed when cultures are so flippant about designating its male population as cannon fodder. I'm also bothered by teachers who say things of their unruly students like "the army will straighten him out," or when they make homophobic observations on the quote-unquote feminized men like "Korea needs the army to make men of its boys." That said, South Korea remains technically at war, and is in one of the hairiest spots in the world, geopolitically. Not sure I want the fellas to take a day off because it's a little chilly outside.
The article would be less open to ridicule if it presented more information about the abuse that soldiers face at the hands of their comrades and superiors, the abuse we routinely read about in the papers. A newsworthy consequence of one case happened three years ago, when a 22-year-old private killed eight other soldiers with a hand grenade after undergoing extensive hazing. The BBC website did a little follow-up, with further information on life in the military. And here's a report from Yonhap that same year; two excerpts:
Despite its fame as one of the best trained and disciplined in the world, South Korea’s 680,000-member military has been marred by a long history of human rights abuses of rank-and-files. Song’s son surely fell victim to the system.
Military records show that 134 South Korean soldiers took their own lives last year in the face of harsh discipline such as beating and verbal abuse. The military again came under public fire earlier this year when an Army captain was found to have had 192 trainees eat human feces as punishment for not flushing toilets.
The incident, coinciding with a string of suicides by enlisted servicemen, further tarnished the military’s image and prompted calls for reform.
. . .
Lee cited other records showing that the number of soldiers who suffer from mental diseases or are kept in on-base detention centers without trial remains unchanged.
According to a Defense Ministry report, 1,299 soldiers were discharged from military hospitals in 2001 after receiving treatment for mental problems, compared with 1,110 in 2002, 1,170 in 2003 and 1,440 in 2004.
A separate ministry report also showed that the number of soldiers who served in military confinement facilities, called "yongchang," stood at 10,690 in 2000, 11,580 in 2001, 11,525 in 2002, 12,074 in 2003 and 11,921 in 2004. Soldiers who commit minor offenses can be temporarily detained for up to 15 days without trial.
“The suicide rate is lower than that of civilians in the same age group, but we have to realize that the suicide percentage in relation to the total casualties in the military is rising. Also, they killed themselves for single reason, which is hardship in their military lives,”said Lee, who participated in a 2003 government investigation of human rights of rank-and-file soldiers.
The suicide endemic in South Korea---which has the highest suicide rate in the OECD---is surely as much to blame for these deaths as the abusive treatment. Or, perhaps another way to look at it, maybe the rigid, regimented lifestyle so many students, young people, and housewives lead has something to do with the high number of suicides among the civilian population.
James Turnbull doesn't make that point, or attempt to, but for some information related to the ubiquity of militarism in contemporary Korean culture, please take a look at this post he did on the subject.
A while ago I came across another article about the latent militarism in Korean schools, which cited, among other things, the communal morning exercises as an example. An interesting point, but I wonder how one would extend that to Japan, which is now nominally pacificst yet which has retained the smae tradition. I don't want to get into how voluntary that embrace of pacifism was---mostly because it was involuntary and a disgusting spin job---but it's something interesting to consider the next time your kids line up in the classroom and move in unison to the piped-in march.
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