Gender confrontation over extra points for military service

Korea is likely to be divided into two over an issue. It is not just an issue between men and women. Over this issue, mothers of sons would have different opinion from mothers of daughters and people with disabilities might think differently from those without disabilities. Military service is a must to do to protect the nation but not a few want to avoid if they can. While those with money and power dodge the military service, ordinary people criticize such behaviors but envy those avoiding the draft, calling them "son of God." Recently, the Military Culture Reform Committee, a private, public and military joint organization, proposed a recommendation to give extra points for compensation to those who completed military service. It seems quite natural that a heated controversy is caused over this recommendation.

The military service is imposed only to men among four duties of a citizen. The Constitution stipulates that all citizens have a duty of military service but the Military Service Law states women can serve in the military only when voluntarily applying. Since the military service is mandatory for men but optional for women, controversy over gender equality starts from here. But a war is not restricted to men. Although Amazones, a nation of all female warriors in the Greek mythology, can be said as imaginary characters, currently 10 nations including Israel and Norway have the female conscription system. In North Korea, women serve in the military for seven years.

Men who completed military service have their own story about proud but boring and weary military life. Whenever those who served in the military gather together, they talk about what they did in the military. But talking about military lives does not provide any benefit. After exhausted 2 years in the military camp, those young men end up with a gap in their education and preparation for employment. As long as there is no change in the current conscription system, people who sacrificed their youth for nation must not be put at a disadvantage, if not compensated properly. In the Gallop’s poll in 2011, 74.2 percent of female respondents were favorable to introduction of extra points system for military service.

The purpose of the Military Culture Reform Committee is to give those who completed military service reward points within 2 percent of the perfect score in the hiring tests of public servants or nation-owned companies. The committee’s proposal considered the Constitutional Court’s 1999 ruling that the military service extra point system, which gave 3-5 percent of the full marks, was a violation of the constitution. When the Ministry of National Defense proposed a military service extra points system that provides 2.5 percent in 2011, simulation of women’s organization showed that only 0.0004 percent of the men who finished their military service could receive the benefit. Although women’s organizations are against the system, conscripted men’s mothers are all women. Young women can raise their scores by 2 points if they study hard for two years when their counterpart young men are in the military camps.