Should women serve? Korea's female conscription debate is back as troop pool shrinks

South Korea’s decade-old debate over female conscription resurfaced during a National Assembly audit this month, amid growing concerns that a shrinking draft-eligible population could undermine military readiness.

During a National Assembly defense committee audit on Oct. 12, opposition lawmakers raised the issue, arguing that the time has come for a public discussion as the eligible male population continues to fall. Defense ministry data shows the pool of 20-year-old men eligible for service dropped from 332,000 in 2019 to 257,000 in 2022, and is projected to fall further to 228,000 by 2035 and 120,000 by 2043.

Rep. Yoo Yeong-ha of the main opposition People Power Party said, "Now, we must officially put female conscription on the table. This will also require broad societal consensus."

Rep. Chun Ha-ram of the Reform Party used the term “gender-equal conscription” — meaning mandatory service for both men and women — to call for a broader discussion on reforming the system.

“If we continue wringing a dry towel without even considering gender-equal conscription as an option, I question whether that is truly desirable from the standpoint of combat capability or national interest,” he said.

Military Manpower Administration (MMA) Commissioner Hong So-young said the agency and the defense ministry are not officially considering universal conscription at this time, but acknowledged the demographic trajectory.

"After 2037, our draft-eligible population will plunge sharply, falling below 150,000 after 2040," Hong said. "The MMA will begin efforts to raise public awareness regarding the importance of fulfilling military service."

She added the ministry and MMA are working to build broader consensus on the matter, in part by increasing the number of female officers.

Decades-long debate

Female conscription has periodically resurfaced as a political issue, but it has rarely been debated publicly amid documented cases of sexual abuse within the military, concerns over crimes against women in service and deep gender divisions in Korean society.

Under the current law, every able-bodied South Korean man between the ages of 18 and 38 is obliged by law to serve in the military. Mandatory conscription was introduced in 1950 and designed around an expanding postwar population. The government repealed a law requiring the military to maintain a force of 500,000 full-time troops in 2023 in response to population decline.

President Lee Jae Myung has been pushing a selective enlistment system since his presidential campaign and has continued to advocate for it since taking office in June 2025. In August, he stressed the need for South Korea to adopt a selective enlistment system to transform the country’s armed forces into a “smart, elite and powerful military” centered on advanced equipment and technology.

Under his proposal, eligible individuals would choose between two tracks: a shortened 10-month term as rank-and-file conscripts or a 36-month term as noncommissioned officers with better pay and benefits than the current system offers.

Shifting public opinion

Public support for female conscription has grown as well.

A recent poll by the Reform Institute, a think tank affiliated with the Reform Party, showed six in 10 South Koreans now support mandatory military enlistment for women — a significant shift from surveys conducted just a few years ago, when support remained below 50 percent.

The survey was conducted on Aug. 18 among 1,006 adults aged 18 and older nationwide and had a response rate of 2.3 percent and a margin of error of plus or minus 3.2 percentage points at a 95 percent confidence level.

Views among young women are mixed. A 26-year-old female student surnamed Kim said she supports female conscription, but only if crimes against women in the military are addressed and conditions for soldiers improve.

“If male manpower falls short, I believe women could also be subject to conscription for national security, given the ongoing division between North and South Korea. However, there are numerous issues in the military. For example, sexual abuses targeting female personnel in military, among other systemic problems, must be fully transparent, with strict accountability and proper institutional reforms," Kim said.

"Broadening the draft pool without fixing these fundamental problems first just doesn't seem like the right approach."

Park, a 33-year-old office worker, opposed the idea, arguing that future warfare would center on technology and that the military should focus on leveraging advanced capabilities rather than expanding headcount.

"Without even touching on gender equality issues, I think female conscription would simply be inefficient, even setting aside the cost and time involved in establishing the system," Park said.

"Despite shrinking troop numbers, future wars will center on technology and advanced weaponry, so we would be better off developing our defense capabilities in that direction using the forces we already have."

Systemic reform first

Experts broadly agreed that societal consensus must come before any policy change, with several warning that simply expanding the draft would be counterproductive without deeper reforms.

"Society needs to discuss why the debate over female mandatory conscription emerged. Any subsequent discussion must gather and reflect the diverse views across our society," Huh Chang-deog, a professor at Yeungnam University, said, adding that before expanding the troops, the country must first address military working conditions and human rights issues in the military.

Calling the idea of unilaterally conscripting women without improving working conditions and soldiers’ status “lazy” and warning that it would deepen social divisions, he said the country may need to encourage voluntary enlistment for anyone who wants to serve by giving more benefits like the United States and making the job “honorable.”

"People join the U.S. military voluntarily because the benefits are substantial ... With jobs so hard to find right now, plenty of young people would willingly join the military if there are good benefits," Huh said.

Yang Uk, a research fellow at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, said female conscription was not yet urgently needed.

"If things get so bad that we can't defend against North Korea without drafting women, then that requires a political decision. But are we in that situation right now? I don't think so."

He proposed a phased approach, suggesting first opening voluntary enlistment for women as enlisted soldiers before considering a broader expansion, given that currently women can only join the armed forces as officers.

Park Jin-soo, a professor at Duksung Women's University, said conscripting women using traditional models is an outdated and nationalistic approach that ignores the realities of modern warfare.

"This premise relies on a troop structure of the past centered on Army conscripts ... What we need are skilled technical specialists in the military," Park said.

"The real discussion should be about overhauling the current conscription system. We need to focus on reducing short-term conscripts and offering better pay and welfare to attract long-term technical specialists and career officers. In that context, expanding roles for women naturally doubles our high-quality talent pool.”