By Choi Sung-jin
"I want to sleep like a log just once," said most Korean soldiers when asked about their biggest difficulty and discomfort in military life, a survey said Tuesday.
Military personnel usually go to bed at 10 p.m. and get up at 6:30 a.m. but they have to stand sentry or keep a night watch for one to two hours a day or every other day at most divisions, which reduces their sleep to six hours at the most, the report said.
Add to this the twists and turns from fatigue or stress and the sleeping habits of their comrades, and their sleeping hours can be shorter, said the report by the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses, based on a survey of 1,900 troops last year.
The largest portion of respondents, 15.6 percent, cited insufficient sleep as their biggest difficulty, as they did in similar surveys in 2013 (21.4 percent) and 2014 (14.8 percent), it said.
"Many soldiers appear to sleep fitfully for various reasons, such as physical fatigue and job stress, particularly before large-scale military drills, or individual or unit training appraisals," a military source said.
A private first class also said: "When I am included on sentry or night vigil, I cannot sleep deeply before and even after the duty."
Nearly 11 percent of respondents pointed to loneliness and "psychological shrinkage," which the report attributed to them feeling alienated from society.
The respondents also cited a poor environment, such as coldness and insufficient water, as the third-biggest difficulty. It indicates that although barracks have been modernized with beds, heating and warm water are still not sufficient.
Unlike expectations outside the barracks, 61.8 percent of troops think the military's efforts to improve the human rights of soldiers have exerted a positive influence on establishing military disciplines. Most of the infringements on troops' human rights were made among soldiers (44.6 percent), followed by between soldiers and non-commissioned officers (20.3 percent).
The most frequent human rights abuse was verbal violence, followed by beating, harsh treatment and sexual embarrassment, the report said.
"I want to sleep like a log just once," said most Korean soldiers when asked about their biggest difficulty and discomfort in military life, a survey said Tuesday.
Military personnel usually go to bed at 10 p.m. and get up at 6:30 a.m. but they have to stand sentry or keep a night watch for one to two hours a day or every other day at most divisions, which reduces their sleep to six hours at the most, the report said.
Add to this the twists and turns from fatigue or stress and the sleeping habits of their comrades, and their sleeping hours can be shorter, said the report by the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses, based on a survey of 1,900 troops last year.
The largest portion of respondents, 15.6 percent, cited insufficient sleep as their biggest difficulty, as they did in similar surveys in 2013 (21.4 percent) and 2014 (14.8 percent), it said.
"Many soldiers appear to sleep fitfully for various reasons, such as physical fatigue and job stress, particularly before large-scale military drills, or individual or unit training appraisals," a military source said.
A private first class also said: "When I am included on sentry or night vigil, I cannot sleep deeply before and even after the duty."
Nearly 11 percent of respondents pointed to loneliness and "psychological shrinkage," which the report attributed to them feeling alienated from society.
The respondents also cited a poor environment, such as coldness and insufficient water, as the third-biggest difficulty. It indicates that although barracks have been modernized with beds, heating and warm water are still not sufficient.
Unlike expectations outside the barracks, 61.8 percent of troops think the military's efforts to improve the human rights of soldiers have exerted a positive influence on establishing military disciplines. Most of the infringements on troops' human rights were made among soldiers (44.6 percent), followed by between soldiers and non-commissioned officers (20.3 percent).
The most frequent human rights abuse was verbal violence, followed by beating, harsh treatment and sexual embarrassment, the report said.
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