Cho Sung-hee

What reasons do we have to maintain 'Mandatory Military Service'? After the World War II and the Korean War, many people in Korea are apt to consider that there will be not a war or conflict anymore, so they have severe doubts about the utility of the present military system; however, maintaining mandatory military service has utility in two aspects--providing many prepared soldiers and cheaper labor for society.

Korea needs a large standing army and mandatory military service provides a great number of prepared soldiers. Korean people have been in specially dangerous situation for about fifty years: we are on the opposite side against North Korea. According to the magazine, Military World, some estimates suggest that 65% of North Korea's armed forces are within 60 miles of the Southern borders. Moreover, the expert in Military World also said that North Korea has continuously supplied well equipped troops and now, its scale is approximately doubled: the total of North Korea's soldiers is 1,055,000 and estimated reservists are 4,700,000. Then how about the number of our soldiers? In South Korea, the total of soldiers is 672,000 and civilian defence corps is about 4,500,000 in 1999. In these situation, our mandatory military service will come in handy when things go wrong. Most Korean men served the army and have been doing in the army, and there they are trained to perform their best in battle. In an emergency, everyone who did already military service can play a part in improving the security of their family, neighborhood, and their country. Therefore, mandatory military service which provides many prepared soldiers is the efficient system in South Korea.

In addition to many prepared soldiers, mandatory military service also can provide cheaper labor for our society. In Korea, we have many accidents or emergency, but we don't have a big, systematic emergency system to help promptly and enough emergency fund to support it. So if there are inundation or wild-fire, we would have to get damage. But, the mandatory military system can provide cheaper labor with many soldiers at once. Soldiers already have been training to deal with any emergency, so they are quickly sent to the scene where accidents happend suddenly and needs some help. In this summer, Moon-san, Youn-chon, and another cities got damage from inundation, and then the army was sent to those places promptly to secure people and recovery them. Not only to secure people from the emergency, a number of soldiers also can supply their labor for Korean farms. In fall, many farms in the country are busy for the harvest, but there aren't enough workers in the country: many old people just try to work. At that time, many soldiers are sent to the field and help the old people. In other words, our mandatory military service can offer many soldiers as labor costfree.