Militarism in Our Everyday Lives

There is a saying, “the Republic of Korea is an army.”  It insinuates the military influence that reigns in every nook and corner of our society.  It is so easy to find something military in our everyday lives.  The streets overflow with people clad in the so-called military look.  Even the most popular toys in children’s toy stores are flashing guns or robots.  It’s better now, but not too long ago, politicians or generals that led wars to victory took up the big chunk of biographies on great persons.  The state of our language is even worse.  In particular, sports broadcasts would not be possible without military expressions.  The strict hierarchical relationships that we have in the workplace or at school are also remnants of a military culture.  “Fake” administrations and our culture for “inspections” also spread through our military experiences.  With the majority of Korean men subjected to the customs, way of thought, and practices of the military, military culture has become the dominant culture of our society.

The mantra that “you finally become a real person after your military service” still exerts a great deal of influence on our society.  If that were true, women or the disabled are beings that do not even have a shot at becoming a real person from the outset.  You do not become a person by going to the army, a person becomes a soldier by going to the army.  A soldier is merely a citizen in a uniform.  The saying that you can only become a real person after your military service only goes to show that the criteria for defining the standard type of person in Korea is determined by the military.  If a person cannot adapt to a vertical military-style order-and-obey environment, or is unable to read the mood of his/her superior and handle his/her subordinates, then that person cannot become the standard type of person that our society requires.  It has been over 20 years since the Korean society freed itself from military dictatorship and entered the path of democratization, but the khaki shade that once colored our nation does not seem to have faded at all. 

Schools

Schools resemble the military.  The fact that you have to go whether you want to or not, that you are happy when told you can go home, that you become excited about the PX (post exchange) and the school tuck-shop, that roll calls are made in the mornings and the evenings, that you have to wear uniforms and get your hair checked, that someone is always standing at the main gate, so on and so forth –  the similarities are countless.  It may be natural for the military and schools to resemble each other in a modern nation, but in the case of Korea, schools are brimming over with militarism.  That’s because the origin of Korean schools was in training soldiers for war.  Elementary schools started to be widely built in Korea towards the end of the Japanese rule.  Japan, which had entered the path of war, built schools as a place for preparing Joseon youth to become future reserve soldiers who could be conscripted into the Japanese army.  If a Joseon youth that had never set foot in a school were conscripted, the Japanese officer in command would have had a hard time.  Since the youth would not know any Japanese, he would only return a blank look to the command to ‘charge forward’, as he would have done to the command to ‘retreat’; he would not have had any sense of time; he would not have had any experience in tight organizations or disciplines.  In short, an uneducated Joseon youth would have been a useless nuisance for the Japanese military.  Japan, which towards the end of the Second World War needed to mobilize a military force of a whopping 700 million soldiers, could not pass on the youth of Joseon.  So the Japanese hastily built elementary schools in the name of ‘youth training and development’, which could play the role of training the youth of Joseon and driving them out to the battle line.  Schools were thus training centers for soldiers.  Schools raised countless military boys and girls.  

In August 1945, Japan surrendered.  The occupying U.S. Army headquarters focused on eradicating militarism by dissolving all the systems that had been formed and mobilized for war.  Even without the efforts of the U.S. Army, the Japanese, in pain and suffering from their defeat, were acutely feeling the errors committed by the Japanese militarists that had driven them into the depths of war.  Unlike Japan, there were no movements to break away from militarism in Korea.  The military boys that were 15 at the time of independence had to go through another war in 1950 when they turned 20.  At a time when Japanese schools advocated peace and human rights education, our schools carried out military trainings and led the way to eradicate communism, with such slogans as “Down with Kim Il-sung!  Wipe out the communists!  Crush the North Korean communist soldiers!  Let’s accomplish our Yusin (Revitalizing Reforms) duties!”  It wasn’t just about military drills overseen by reserved officers freshly back from the Vietnam War.  The autonomous student body was replaced by the Hakdohogukdan (Student Organization for the Defense of the Fatherland), and the class president saw his/her title changed to the strange-sounding Yeondaejansaengdo (Solidarity and Longevity Student). Schools strictly controlled the hair and clothes of the students. Guidance teachers, at the school main gate or in the hallways, unmercifully cut off the hair of students who had hair that was longer than school regulations.  Controlling hair means controlling the whole body.  Students became used to such control.  Schools, for boys, were a softer version of the army.  Boys were becoming accustomed to military culture even before going to the army and receiving full-scale military training.  Girls also assimilated the military culture at schools which were run like the military and with their teachers who had come back from the army.

The Birth of a Garrison State

Traditionally, Korea for a very long time was under the influence of Confucian culture. The Korean society’s tradition of ‘upholding literature and suppressing the military’ quickly changed into that of a garrison state during the Korean War and the ensuing Park Chung-hee era.  People with military backgrounds moved our world from various parts of our society based on the principles and networks gained from the military.  Companies, factories, schools all changed into thoroughly orderly military-style organizations that moved at the will of the chief person in charge.  Through the January 21, 1968 incident and the Pueblo navy ship incident two days later, the entire Korean society was transformed into a huge garrison.  The dispatch of troops to Vietnam on the one hand, and the general mood pushing people to fight and build on the other sped the militarization process of the Korean society.  Now, at fixed hours in the morning and the evening, people in the streets had to stop in their footsteps at the sound of the national anthem, as if playing ‘freeze’.  And it wasn’t limited to the raising and lowering of the national flag.  In a movie theater, before the start of a movie, young men and women on leisurely dates also had to stand up at the sound of the national anthem and salute the Korean flag flapping on the screen. Did that create a sense of patriotism?  Even military men that ordered such actions probably didn’t have such foolish illusions.  Then why did they make even young men and women going to the movies do that?  They wanted to break in the whole body.  Through our inured bodies, militarism and anti-communism became deeply imprinted in our minds.

The Park Chung-hee regime established the ‘National Charter of Education’ which stipulated that each and every citizen “I was born with the historical mission to revive the nation”.  A world had come where even the meaning of our birth was defined by the military regime.  The state gave each citizen a 13-digit (it was 12-digits in the beginning) resident number.  Korea probably is the only country on earth that ‘manages’ its people with this single number.  The garrison state of the Republic of Korea even tried to control the hair and clothes of its constituents like in schools and the army.  The police played out their farce of cracking down on men with long hair and women with mini skirts in the streets.

The first and foremost mechanism that endlessly evokes militarism in a society is the system of the reserve forces.  Immediately following the January 21, 1968 incident, Park Chung-hee founded the Hyangto (Native Homeland) Reserve Forces.  The Korean military force counted between 200,000 to 250,000 soldiers throughout most of the Korean War.  The military force suddenly grew prior to the cease-fire, to 350,000 soldiers at the time of the cease-fire, and to the impressive 600,000 soldiers by 1955, the year of the so-called ‘Double Eight Year Army’.  Compared to the size of the military during the Korean War, it would not be an exaggeration to say that today’s large-scale force of 700,000 soldiers would only have been possible at that time by putting a military uniform on the reserve forces of the reserve forces.  Add to that a reserve forces of 3 million plus a civil defense force of 5 million!  Why detain so many people when we’re not going to use human wave tactics?  That’s because systems such as the reserve forces or the civil defense are important mechanisms in maintaining and spreading militarism and nationalism. 

Two months after the reserve forces were set up, Kim Young-sam, the then-Party Leader of Sinmindang (New Democracy Party), proposed a bill on June 25, 1968 to annul the reserve forces.  Kim Dae-jung created a sensation by pledging the abolishment of the reserve forces during the presidential election campaigns in 1971.  Those very two persons became presidents over the next 10 years, but not once was the word ‘abolish’ pronounced regarding the reserve forces.  The militarization of the Korean society had progressed too far to be fixed.

The Conscription System

The Republic of Korea requires military service from all men.  The Korean law says so.  But in reality, the concept of ‘all’ is applied differently according to whether you are a ‘son of God’, a ‘son of the General’, a ‘son of Man’ or a ‘son of Darkness’.  The Korean conscription system is a strange system that does not make the most of the biggest advantage of such systems, which is equality.  The reason Napoleon could conquer Europe is not only because he was a genius military strategist. The French ‘citizens’, liberated from their serfdom, fought with their lives to defend their freedom and property rights.  The reason the ruling class in Germany and many other countries accepted democracy is because the people’s army based on a conscription system was the most effective means to achieve a wealthy nation and a powerful army.  Meanwhile, the Korean conscription system did not have the citizens’ rights in mind, but only imposed duties on them, thus degraded into a strange system that had nothing to do with the original spirit of the system.  Clause 2 of article 39 of the Korean Constitution stipulates that “no citizen shall be treated unfavorably on account of the fulfillment of his obligation of military service,’’ but this article is unfortunately only the most thoroughly disregarded article in our Constitution.  The present monthly salary of conscripted soldiers is a little less than 100,000 won.  And that is following its five-fold increase in the past 4-5 years.  In a word, under the Korean conscription system, man is worth nothing.  In 2002, the monthly salary of soldiers doing mandatory military service was a measly 20,000 won.  45% of the National Defense budget reaching tens of trillions of won was labor cost, but the labor cost of all the conscripts doing their mandatory service put together, who represented 80% of the Korean army, was only 130 billion won, taking up merely 0.8% of the budget.  That year, the Korean government gave 520 billion won in cash to the U.S. Armed Forces in Korea for their stay, an amount which is exactly four times the total yearly salary of the 550,000 conscripts put together.  It is such conscripts in the riot police unit, equipped with a stick and paid this salary, who guard the world’s most powerful U.S. Army on cold winter nights.

In December 1999, the Constitutional Court ruled that the ‘accumulated military points’ system was unconstitutional.  Even the conservative Constitutional Court concluded that it could not let the bad system go on whereby job opportunities of women and the disabled were being blocked under the name of ‘accumulated military points’.  In the meantime, the ‘accumulated military points’ system was the only compensation that the Republic of Korea was providing to its huge and underpaid military.  When the system was abolished, it would not be an understatement to say that some of the reserve forces threw a fit which called for not a logical discussion, but some sort of a ‘treatment’.  But what we must clearly remember is that the anger of the members of the reserve forces is not unfounded.  Those who do their mandatory military service must endure an incredible amount of unfavorable treatment.  They receive in total around 1 million won in salary which, compared to those privileged enough to be exempt from military service, equals to at least 25 million won which they are paying with their body.  There is no compensation for such unfavorable treatment.  And most of those treated unfavorably are ‘sons of Darkness’.  It is only natural that these men become angry about the unfavorable treatment they have gone through.  However, what is not right is the target of their anger.  The object of the anger of the reserve forces and the current and future conscripts should not be the women or the disabled that got rid of the ‘accumulated military points’ system, but the state that has been imposing this wrong system for decades, and ourselves that left the system as it is despite going through it.  In that sense, the fact that whether the sons of the presidential candidates fulfilled their military service duties or not became such a decisive variable in the election campaigns of 1997 and 2002 was a sign of significant change in our society.

“Conscientious Objection” to Mandatory Military Service

It is not easy to openly refuse military service in Korean society where militarism has been internalized.  Korea has seen approximately 13,000 “conscientious objectors” up to now, 99% of whom are religious followers of the Jehovah’s Witnesses.  There have only been around 30 non-Jehovah’s Witness pacifists objecting to mandatory military service since Mr. Tae Yang Oh in 2001.  When I mention this to pacifists overseas, they always ask the same question.  What is the position of Korean Christians on conscientious objection to mandatory military service, that only Jehovah’s Witnesses object to it?  Such a question is only natural.  In the case of the U.S., there were 12,000 objectors at the time of the Second World War, only 600, that is 5%, of which were Jehovah’s Witnesses.  Half of the objectors were followers of pacifist religious orders such as the Quakers, Lutherans, Mennonites, and Anabaptists, and the other half were those of the traditional orders of Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, followers of the Holiness Movement, Catholics, Anglicans, etc.  Thus, the fact that only Jehovah’s Witnesses are ‘exclusively’ objecting to mandatory military service in Korea is incomprehensible for them. 

Foreigners also ask another question.  They ask whether Korea is not a country of strong Buddhist traditions.  Whether Buddhism is not a religion whose supreme precept is to refrain from taking life, and whose important teachings include not even touching or keeping tools that may take life.  Then aren’t there any Buddhist followers that object to mandatory military service?  When I answer no, they seem puzzled, and ask another question.  Korea is one of the countries that fought the most fiercely for democratization, so among the young Koreans who risked their lives in their fight for democracy against military dictatorships, weren’t there any that openly objected to mandatory military service?  Unfortunately, since nationalism and militarism were so deeply internalized in our society, even the Korean democracy movement was not aware that such an action could exist.  When, in the beginning of 2001, the issue of conscientious objection was first publicly brought up, it was an unfamiliar concept even among human rights activists.

The groups in Korean society that strongly oppose to conscientious objection to mandatory military service are first, those that advocate national security, such as the Ministry of National Defense, the military, and the Veterans Association; second, conservative Christian groups such as the Christian Council of Korea; and third, the reserve forces.  Among them, the unyielding and intolerant stance of the reserve forces towards conscientious objection to mandatory military service is the most heartbreaking reflection of our Korean society.

Wounds and Healing

How many youths lost their lives in the army after the Korean War?  Around 4,000 American soldiers died during the 5 years of war in Iraq.  That makes an average of around 800 who were sacrificed per year.  How about Korean soldiers?  In the 1950’s and 60’s, well over 1,500 died every year; 1,200 to 1,300 per year in the 70’s; 800 in the 80’s; 300 in the 90’s; and the figure has decreased to some 150 per year since year 2000.  Which means that until the Korean society finally entered the right track to democratization, some 1,000 Korean soldiers died every year even without a war going on.  After the military dictatorship came down and the Korean society entered the road to democratization, the military was no longer sacred grounds.  The fact alone that civilians could look into the military was enough to drastically reduce the number of deaths in the military.   

As the death toll testifies, beatings and cruelties in the military were commonplace.  (They still are, but the military is making great strides every day these days.  There are even some recently-retired servicemen who claim to not have been beaten once.)  There’s a saying in the Korean army that goes “having the dust beaten out on a rainy day.”  It’s hard to raise dust on a rainy day, but the saying just goes to show how hard the beatings are.  In the meantime, if there are people who have the dust beaten out of them on a rainy day, that means that there are also people who are beating the dust out of these people.  In a sense, the military is the fairest society in the Republic of Korea.  People who go to the army experience a rise in status in a very short period of time.  After being assigned to a unit, a second class private is hardly ever reproached for any mistakes he may make no matter how serious they may be.  It’s like being an under-aged delinquent. However, that suddenly changes the day when a new junior soldier arrives.  How did you train him for him to behave like that?  And so goes the incessant criticism of the seniors, and he arrives at a point where he can’t go to sleep unless he has called the juniors together at night for some sort of disciplinary action.  And as time passes by, after an earful from the seniors, he gives an earful to his juniors.  What he promised he would never do when he became a first class private, he finds himself adeptly doing towards the end of his corporal days.  That’s the reason the military does not change.  I, a victim, become a fully functioning member of the military system before I know it, executing my specific role to make the system work well.  The experience of being beaten in the army,  and beating in the army,  even if there are less beatings these days, the structure itself whereby a soldier needs to control another soldier has not changed at all.  Knowing how to read the mood of the superior, and handling subordinates, that is the kind of ‘quality’ that our society calls ‘leadership’.  Every year, some 270,000 youths enter society equipped with such ‘leadership’ qualities, and another 270,000 shave their hair and put on military uniforms to fill up the space left by their predecessors.  

Those who wasted their time in the army still say that they gained something from it, and that they gained patience.  Is it really necessary to spend two prime years of one’s life digging dirt in the army to gain patience?  If they gained something from it, why did they feel so wronged and throw such a fit when the ‘accumulated military points’ system was abolished?  It is important for youths who have been hurt and cheated by the army to look straight into their wounds.  We cannot expect to heal wounds if we hide them.  If we render absolute the power that have wounded us and despair that it will never change no matter what, we cannot overcome our wounds.  Militarism settles inside us through our resignation, and goes beyond the army, to rule our society in general.

For many men, their biggest nightmare is dreaming about being caught and sent to the army again.  If we consider such dreams to be vile, then shouldn’t we wash away the militarism that has spread in our society first?

Getting over militarism does not only free men from these nightmares.  Overcoming the cumbersome hold of militarism is also a matter of great poignancy for women who have to live with fathers who have been to the army, teachers who have been to the army, friends and lovers who have been to the army, and fellow students and colleagues who have been to the army.  And the starting point is to realize how close militarism is in our everyday lives.