Those who have rotted away in the military, as President Roh Moo-hyun would have it, know how hard it is to spend part of their youth when they might usefully study or work in mandatory military service. There are few who haven’t at one time or another felt a sense of grievance that they alone should shoulder the burden. I, too, feel I was rotting away there and think the shorter the military service the better. But the presidential remarks disparaging the military late last year, and the gift of shorter military service, were by no means music to my ears.
To start with, it was shameful of the supreme commander of the armed forces to talk of military service as “rotting away.” If the 600,000 young people who are defending the republic, using up their youth in bitterly cold weather, are rotting away, it is the supreme commander who is ultimately to blame. Even if every last South Korean used the expression, the president himself may not. How dare a man who has accomplished so little in the past four years deride the military as a place where time is being wasted this far into his tenure?
If he really thinks our young people are rotting way, it befits a responsible leader to provide ways and means by which young people might do something better than rot in the military. However much the military environment improves, soldiers cannot lead a life as comfortable and easy as civilians. The sense of deprivation in military service cannot be solved by improving the conditions alone. Instead, we have to restore the servicemen's honor and sense of pride. If it is impossible to make military service an honorable and proud experience, then of course the military is a place where we rot away, no matter how briefly. With his remarks, the chief executive only aggravated the sense of loss the conscripts already feel.
The president's abrupt proposal to shorten the military service is hardly convincing either. The North Korean nuclear crisis has not been resolved, nor has the president retracted his plan to take over full operational control of our armed forces, nor have our military resources all of a sudden bloomed. Yet the president, who already shortened military service by two months early in his tenure and who has no hope of becoming president again, denigrates the military with one hand and unwraps the gift of even shorter military service on the other. His true motive must remain a mystery, but what is clear is that a gift of shorter rotting time is not much to get excited about.
Still, it must be tempting for the young men facing conscription. Not two months but a whole six less in the army! Whatever it will mean for our defense capability and tax burden, the opposition is unlikely to oppose it openly with the presidential election around the corner. As was the case with Roh’s pledge to move the capital, from which he benefited substantially in his own election, the shorter mandatory service, once announced, is irrevocable. Though the president's unconscionable terminology will leave office with him, the gift package will be handed over to the next administration intact to increase the burden on the public.
Not all gifts are generous. They need to be given with love and sincerity or they are nothing but bribes or bait. We have just about a year to go until the Dec. 19 presidential election. Whenever I read articles that an opposition presidential hopeful runs far ahead of others in the polls, I start worrying what the next unsolicited gift will be. Let us hope and pray that none of the candidates in the forthcoming presidential election will unpack irresponsible gifts at the expense of the republic's security and potential growth.
The column was contributed by Jun Bong-gwan, a professor at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology.
