The Korean Military Draft
Recently I have been interested in the military draft system in Korea, so I wrote a small explanation of some of it and am leaving it here :) In Korea I often met people who did special work instead of military service, or had exemptions for various reasons I didnโt completely understand. So I did some research, and itโs pretty interesting, in my opinion.
This conscription system is called a ์ง๋ณ์ , and the military service is called ๋ณ์ญ. Those who are drafted either get drafted into active duty(ํ์ญ), or into non-active duty. Being drafted into active duty is referred to as ์ง์ง, while being drafted into another service is called ์์ง.ย Those non-active duty services include the reserve(์๋น์ญ) and what is referred to as โsupplemental dutyโ (๋ณด์ถฉ์ญ) which includes a variety of alternative services (๋์ฒด๋ณต๋ฌด).
Those in active service go into the army (์ก๊ตฐ) or the marine corps (ํด๋ณ) for 21 months, the navy (ํด๊ตฐ) for 23 months, or the air force (๊ณต๊ตฐ) for 24 months.
The types of ๋์ฒด๋ณต๋ฌด are as follows:
1.ย ย ย ย ๊ณต์ต๊ทผ๋ฌด์์ Public Interest Service Personnel
2.ย ย ย ย ๊ตญ์ ํ๋ ฅ๋ด์ฌ์์ International Cooperation Personnel
3.ย ย ย ย ์์ ยท์ฒด์ก์์ Arts and Sports Personnel
4.ย ย ย ย ์ฐ์
๊ธฐ๋ฅ์์ Skilled Industrial Personnel
5.ย ย ย ย ์ ๋ฌธ์ฐ๊ตฌ์์ Technical Research Personnel
6.ย ย ย ย ๊ตญ์ ํ๋ ฅ์์ฌ International Cooperation Doctor
7.ย ย ย ย ๊ณต์ต๋ฒ๋ฌด๊ด Public Service Advocate
8.ย ย ย ย ๊ณต์ค๋ณด๊ฑด์์ฌ Public Health Doctor
9.ย ย ย ย ์ง๋ณ์ ๋ด์์ฌ Draft Physical Doctor (ie, a doctor who gives draftees physical examinations)
1&2 serve for 24 months, 3&4 serve for 34 months, and 5~9 serve for 36 months.
Obviously, those who qualify to do service in these special ๋์ฒด๋ณต๋ฌด categories are exceptional, highly-skilled individuals. The most hotly-contested among them is the ์์ ยท์ฒด์ก์์ category which applies to athletes who receive any Olympic medal, athletes who win gold at the Asian Games or other major sport events, artists who win first or second place in specific art contests and artists who receive education in intangible cultural artifacts (traditional Korean music, dance, etc). The reasoning behind giving special treatment to these athletes are artists is simple: they deserve exemption because they have done amazing feats to bring glory to Korea and Korean cultural on an international scale. But why does that reasoning apply to some artists and not others? A Korean idol group ranking first on the Billboard Artist 100 chart also brings glory to Korea on an international scale, and yet those idols donโt receive special treatment in regards to military service. So fans are understandably upset about the nonsensical reasoning behind this particular law.
There are seven levels of health one can receive in the initial physical examination. Those ranked 1~3 go to ํ์ญ, and 4 to ๋ณด์ถฉ์ญ. High schools dropouts (or those who didnโt attend high school at all) go to ๋ณด์ถฉ์ญ even if they are ranked 1~3.
Those who rank 5 receive โtime-of warโ status (์ ์๊ทผ๋ก์ญ) also known as โsecond eligible conscription statusโ (์ 2๊ตญ๋ฏผ์ญ), which means that they receive exemption and would only be drafted in the case that an emergency mobilization order is sent out at a time of war. Those in this category only need to undergo civil defense training (๋ฏผ๋ฐฉ์ ํ๋ จ) and not the official military training.
Anyone who ranks 6 or lower (ie, is in very poor health) receives exemption and does not need to undergo any training at all.
The other special circumstances for receiving an exemption from military service (๋ฉด์ ) or eligibility for ์ ์๊ทผ๋ก์ญ/๋ณด์ถฉ์ญ are as follows:
1. ์๊ณ์ ์ง ๊ณค๋์ฌ์ : Those who have a certain number of dependents they must take care of > ์ ์๊ทผ๋ก์ญ
2. ์ํ์ฌ์ : Those who are convicts > ์ ์๊ทผ๋ก์ญ
3. ๊ณ ์์ฌ์ : Those whose parents died before the age of 13 and had no other family to care of them, or otherwise spent 5+ years living in an orphanage facility > ์ ์๊ทผ๋ก์ญ
4. ๊ทํ์ ์ฌ์ : Those who became nationalized in another country > ์ ์๊ทผ๋ก์ญ
5. ์ .๊ณต์์ ๊ฐ์กฑ: Those who have a parent or sibling who died in battle or suffered an injury in battle ranked 6 or higher in severity > 6 months in ๋ณด์ถฉ์ญ
6. ์ฑ์ ํ์: Those whoโve had sex-reassignment surgery > ์ ์๊ทผ๋ก์ญ
7. ๊ตฐ์ฌ๋ถ๊ณ์ ์ด๋ถ์ง์ญ ์ด์ฃผ ์ฌ์ : Those who live north of the Military Demarcation Line > ๋ฉด์
8. ์ง๋ณ/์ฌ์ ์ฅ์ : Those who have a serious disease and/or a mental or physical disorder > ๋ฉด์
Draft Evasion (๋ณ์ญ๋น๋ฆฌ)
Those who refuse to go to the military for moral reasons are called conscientious objectors (์์ฌ์ ๋ณ์ญ ๊ฑฐ๋ถ์) and are sent to prison for 3+ years, making them eligible for ์ ์๊ทผ๋ก์ญ as convicts. Some argue that people with religious objections to violence should receive exemption from the draft without being sent to prison, but alas, this is a difficult exemption to create because anyone who doesnโt want to go to the military for any reason at all could use it under the guise of fabricated moral outrage.
There are also those who go out of their way to evade military service through deceptive means. This ranges from forging documents, pulling out oneโs teeth, eating oneself into obesity, faking addictions/mental health problems, purposefully damaging tendons/ligaments/bones etc.ย
I highly recommend this article about how Korean celebrities who had draft evasion scandals suffered a bigger hit on their reputation (and went to prison longer) than those who had scandals related to sexual misconduct, drugs, gambling and drunk driving. Basically, being a draft evader is one of the worst things you can do as a Korean celebrity (or any Korean person).ย
์ง๋ณ(์ ), draft/conscriptionย
์ง์ง, conscription into active duty
์์ง, conscription intoย non-active duty
๊ตฐ๋์ ์ง์ง๋๋ค, to be drafted into the military
์
์ํ๋ค, to enter into service
ํด์ญํ๋ค, to retire from the military
์ง๋ณ๊ฒ์ฌ, draft physical
๋ณ์ญ๋ฉด์ : exemption from military service
๋ณ์ ์ ์ : removal from military register
๋ฏผ๋ฐฉ์ ํ๋ จ: civil defense training
์์ฌ์ ๋ณ์ญ๊ฑฐ๋ถ: contentious objection
๋ณ์ญ๋น๋ฆฌ: draft evasionย ย
