Defense ministry mulling review of deaths of service members
This photo shows service members under training. Yonhap
The defense ministry is considering launching a review of the deaths of over 38,000 service members who died while serving their country but were not recognized to have died in the line of duty, the ministry said Sunday.
To this end, the ministry has commissioned a study on ways to reinvestigate the deaths and possible compensation for those whose deaths and service were not properly recognized.
Those subject to the review may include people who died during military service for reasons including unknown causes and suicide.
According to data submitted to Rep. Baek Sun-hee of the minor Rebuilding Korea Party, there were a total of 38,056 cases of non-duty-related deaths as of 2022.
The figure includes 20,205 deaths from illnesses or other unnatural causes and 12,798 suicides. The remaining 5,054 deaths were caused by general reasons, such as disasters and illnesses.
Service members who took their own lives were not eligible to be recognized as having died in the line of duty until the 2000s.
However, the revision of the Military Personnel Management Act in 2014 enabled suicides and deaths from aggravation of preexisting illnesses during service to be classified as line-of-duty deaths.
In commissioning the study, the defense ministry said there were many cases that could be classified as deaths on duty under the current standards.