Democratized Korean army
By Kim Seong-jun
"Hi, my son! Was it hard training today?" "Yes! It was so tough physically." These are the contents of the KakaoTalk chat yesterday with my only son who joined the army in June this year and now serves as a soldier ranked private in Gangwon Province.
Sometimes when I work overtime, I wonder how my son is doing. So I call him on his cellphone in the evening. As I can reach him like this, I often feel as if my son was still in school. It may be a daily routine between parents in Korea and their sons doing their military service.
When you search the internet for "today's military service," you see a lot of stories about the realities of the Korean army that are really surprising. Soldiers now can use mobile phones after work hours, go out in the evenings after work, use credit cards to relax at singing and PC rooms and the much better Post Exchange (PX), a kind of convenience store in the military units.
Frankly speaking, I don't want to recall my bygone military service from almost 30 years ago. Against my will, I had to endure ice baths, various forms of labor, poor living conditions and the same kinds of meals again and again as a challenge to my mental strength. Rather positively, I believed that I needed to strengthen my body in the middle of winter as I was still young. I felt that it was a kind of shared common responsibility that young people had to shoulder because our country was still not able to take good care of the soldiers fulfilling their military service.
It seems that the strictness of the ranks and unreasonable orders to soldiers have almost disappeared.
The Korean army has already been transformed into a democratized army. The safety and health, and the risk of accidents, which parents who send their sons to the military would always worry about, have been largely eliminated.
And even though it's not perfect when you hear about the state of your son's military barracks, it is said that it is well-maintained and enough to avoid any inconvenience in their living. I believe that many of these remarkable changes have been possible thanks to the efforts and investment of the government and military officials. I personally support today's democratized Korean army.
A while back, there was a case where a man from North Korea broke through the Guard Post (GP) and General Out Post (GOP) in the frontlines and was found wandering after more than 10 hours. This is not an excuse but a problem with the local terrain and the current military's poor detection system. Many Korean soldiers in the military front line are taking turns patrolling iron fences and night shifts for 24 hours at a time, which has not changed from decades ago.
But nowadays, artificial intelligence and digital technology have been much advanced. So, if a more sophisticated and detailed management system using high-quality CCTV and artificial intelligence is available, many soldiers can be allocated to other tasks such as education and training. Of course, a lot of defense budget and finance will be required for this.
Anyway, more support to the military for advancing its services should not be spared. In the future, I think it is necessary to increase the number of professional soldiers who are specialized and suitable for special missions through the military recruitment system.
This is not because my son is now serving in the military but because I felt desperately 30 years ago that the quality of military service for the young Korean men really needed a lot of development. Today, I would like to send praise and encouragement to all the sons in Korea who are fulfilling their duty of national defense in the middle of winter, wishing all the young men a safe military service and discharge.
The writer is a managing director of KMTC Line (Korea Marine Transport Co., LTD) and he can be reached at his email: sjkhim@ekmtc.com.