the choices for south korean men are literally: join the military for 18 months, flee the country before they’re age 24-ish (they don’t let men who haven’t served yet leave the country once they’re around that age, because of the possibility of them fleeing), or go to prison for 3+ years, where they’re given prison labor so it’s like they’re “serving” south korea anyway. the south korean government also keeps a public database of draft dodgers, assumedly so they can be publicly shamed for the rest of their lives (and it affects future employment, of course).

currently the only exemptions are for “cultural merit” (olympic athletes, asian game winners, classical musicians and dancers, etc, hence why people thought BTS would fit in this category because it’s all about who brings prestige to south korea internationally, and BTS literally accounts for 1% of south korea’s entire annual GDP), mentally and physically disabled men, certain STEM programs where they can work as engineers instead of serving, firefighters, and some extreme examples like “this guy is the only doctor in a small town” or “this guy’s wife just died and there’s nobody else available to raise their young kids” — and it’s a big open secret that the sons of wealthy businessmen and chaebols mysteriously always get exempted for one reason or another, of course.

the cultural merit exemption rule was written back in the 1960s, before kpop and kdramas and all that ever existed, so in the last decade or so, a lot of people have been calling for an expansion of who gets exempted and how that rule’s defined, while others say giving celebrities special treatment is unfair. i don’t know if i even have an opinion on this because i’m so anti-military i’m just like.. exempt every man, dissolve the military, fuck it all — but: in the past, enlisted celebrities like kpop idols and actors have faced such extreme levels of bullying, sexual harassment (including other soldiers taking pictures of them in the public showers to sell online), and more, to the extent that just a few months ago, shinee’s taemin was transferred to a public service role because of how much the harassment and bullying he was facing was affecting his mental health.

It absolutely makes sense for me to process information this way — in many situations I’ve been in, that instinct would have been correct, and helped me stay safe. But it isn’t correct anymore, and it would be unhealthy — and unfair — to act as if it were. I’m not wrong for feeling the way I do, but if I forced my partner to treat my feelings as reality — if I called him five times a day while he was at work to have him reassure me he wasn’t mad at me, if I forbade him from ever taking time to himself without reminding me it wasn’t about me, or ever being outwardly upset about things like having a bad day at work because it makes me anxious — that would be a terrible relationship for him to be in. I’m not wrong for feeling how I do, but it’s on me to make a plan for how to cope with it: to remind myself to look at the evidence and ask whether there’s any suggestion that I’m actually about to be harmed, to develop my own coping strategies, to be self-aware of my own history and the way I map it onto my present. I can certainly ask my partner for support in this, or to make some concessions to my history that he agrees are both fair and healthy for him, but I can’t ask him to bend over backwards for me because I’m not willing to do the work at all. We can’t justify harmful things we do to others by pointing to the ways they’re related to how we ourselves were harmed — a reason isn’t a justification.