South Korea students gain weight 'to dodge military service' - Sensationalist Headlines

I think it's kind of obnoxious that people who are rabidly against conscription are almost always people who's never served in the military. Out of all the people whom have responded to me only one have served and one is about to serve. Also thanks for assuming that scandinavian country = everything is rainbows, lol. Like I've stated twice before your entire experience depend entirely on how your country is and how its basic levels of society functions. You live in a social and/or economic shithole? Yeah, it's going to be bad. Your country is at war with another country? Yeah, they're going to try and toughen you up alot more. If the answer is no to the above then your experience will most likely not be a horrible nightmare if you just suck it up like and adult and accept that hey, you could actually learn a thing or two about yourself. You're gonna get new friends, you're gonna have bad and good experiences. What else fits this exact description? Life.

Nobody tell Deviantart about this, they'll get ideas.

And if your country isn't taking part in defensive war or close to being at war then what is the point of making military service mandatory again? Also forcing grown adults to take part in training they want no part in and don't think will be useful to them is acceptable because "life is tough"? Get out of there with that bullshit.

hi I served and fucking hated it, as did the majority of people I encountered while in that shithole. fuck you for pushing your rose-tinted view of conscription onto everyone else.

I'm just going to pull out of this discussion. We're obviously not agreeing on this subject. I'd also like to point out that as much as I'm pro-military (etc.) I don't deny that it, alongside compulsory service, has its faults. It is not a perfect system and I think two years of service is a bit too much (9 months is fairly average IMO).

"I find it obnoxious that people who criticize conscription are typically people who haven't served in the military" *Proceeds to rate someone who served and hated it dumb, bails out*

then why did you say the following: Unless you live in a third world shithole you can always drop out. Plus military conscription varies between countries. Because I can tell you that it's not all about dying in a muddy trench. It's about discovering new things about yourself. Learning new skills (aside from shooting guns) that can help you in the everyday life. Most importantly you get friends for life. The connection I have to my military colleagues is on par with my family and I think that's amazing. you've taken your own experience and used it do disparage people who are against conscription by saying that they haven't experienced it themselves, so they have no right to complain. then when faced with people who have gone through conscription and hated it, you bail because your precious romanticised world view is about to be shattered. for a soldier whose duty is to defend their country you sure are spineless.

I was typing up my response to you when he posted but, okay.

this is not a debate, and there is no argument.

I opted for civil service anyway, which is great work experience in great places btw depending on your area/working possibilities. So legally speaking I refused arms, but yea I can't say that I disagree with you there. I would probably grab the arms too if my country asked me to for a reasonable cause under the martial law or sth. I think we've got enough people in reserve though that we wouldn't even need to arm and mobilize all of them. Should it come down to that? Yea I'm down with you I guess, with teeth and nails.

Okay. Still no need for personal attacks. I'm sorry your experience was shitty but that doesn't automatically mean it's going to be shit for everyone.

Hey there, I served. Hated every single moment of it and can almost certainly say that it was a colossal waste of three years and can also almost certainly say that even had it been a single year or half a year, nothing of value would've been gained. I did not get a single good experience that did not involve me somehow evading sisyphian and pointless responsibilities forced on me from above, and I did not find a single friend (as a matter of fact, I found more people who I hated and had absolutely no choice but to serve with and serve under). I can also safely say that the very prospect of what is essentially low-pay servitude in which every deviance from the arbitrary whims of commanding officers is met with punishment and threats, in which one is treated like a number and given absolutely fucking arbitrary tasks to accomplish and hardly given the tools to accomplish them, has done a lot of psychological long-term damage for me - and I wasn't even in a combat role. I sat in an air-conditioned lab. Whether your country is at war or a shithole has no bearing on the inherent character of compulsory military service - one that is very similar (although glorified) to a prison. The more they give you, the more they can threaten to take away when you disobey. I'm fucking sorry I'm incapable of "sucking it up like an adult" when I am not treated like a human being and my only recourse to protest is to serve time in a military prison, further prolonging my service. You really shouldn't assume that your experience is in any way indicative of the majority of people, or that people like me do not exist and would not get absolutely fucked by what you propose. Your post honestly made me pretty mad for a few minutes, there.

your entire point was that conscription is a good thing and people can opt out if they want to. which is demonstrably false since 1. plenty of people who have gone through conscription absolutely did not find it enriching the way you did and 2. they did not have a choice in the matter. you're preaching from your ivory tower and assuming that every conscript had it as good as you did, which is just fucking insulting.

I'm sorry if I offended anyone.

forgot about this. equating conscription to "life" is some pompous bullshit and is a fucking horrible justification to forcing people into becoming a tool of the state.

Fuck off with that shit. You do not have to be chef to know that soup is shit. I would have rather gotten job experience in my field instead of wasting time earning 100 euro a month which is just about enough to get a snack or two on my weekends off plus transport costs. It is a literal time waste for people who have their shit in life sorted already. Period. Im not gonna go into detail that you learn jack shit useful stuff for civilian life sans, maybe, i dunno, NATO phonetic alphabet? Like, name me at least 3 positive things that I can get from service. And please, omit all those "friends and connections" because trust me I got more than enough for at least next 20 years.

on that note let's not forget these likely lads who doesn't even live in a country with conscription:

For nations like the US and UK that are some ways from a potential adversary and as such must rely mostly on projecting power with all its associated complexities, all volunteer forces are preferable to volunteer forces, but for nations that have peer adversaries with poor relations in immediate geographic proximity, you need the pool of standing manpower/combat power that drafted forces give you to both deter and if necessary fight a conflict. You go to war with the army you have etc. For those countries, national security is a more pressing and immediate concern than a small measure of freedom and that's why the draft in those countries likely won't be dropped anytime soon

Sure it’s important for developing a child’s critical thinking and mental skills, but I’m talking about schooling at later ages such as high school where that’s not as much the case. And I don’t want it to just mean people are more physically active, I think a lot of the things people get from military training are not physical. If you had mandatory training that was similar to officer training then I think most people would benefit from it. It gives a solid appreciation and understanding of how leadership works, forces you to learn how to focus and problem solve under non-ideal circumstances, basically forces you to make good friends, and overall requires you to learn how to play your role in a team. I can’t think of anything except military training that tries to teach problem solving in a field environment, but that could just be me being ignorant.

The vast majority of roles filled by conscripts do not consist of training of this sort, but of, quite frankly, otherwise avoidable labor in systems that usually have way more manpower than they have openings at work for. So what do they do? They invent new positions for people to fill that serve no real purpose, and divide and delegate existing positions to several sub-positions in ways that do not necessarily increase productivity, and necessarily turns otherwise engaging (but not always motivated) work into drudgery fit for lobotomized monkeys. Conscription, even in countries supposedly in perpetual danger like my own, has a habit of turning into a farce of legal obligation where all sane logic (and sane logistics!) dies - where people wake up every day and work not because they are inherently needed in their base for manpower reasons, but because the military bureaucracy structures the army in such a way that their presence would be necessary for things not to (quite arbitrarily) fall apart. Because everybody gotta serve, you don't want to be a traitor now, do you? And the worst part about all this? This is taken to be a given - to be absolutely understandable and okay.

my viewpoint has shifted over the last few posts as I read and gave it more thought. i don't support conscription, i support a moral imperative to defend your people, if not your nation. if you are capable of fighting to defend what you believe in and the people you love, i believe you should. if you do not, i'll judge you cowardly because of that, but that is my own judgement. i don't believe your right to self-determination should be violated by being forced to fight a war you do not want to via conscription, but there should be some spark inside that rouses you to defend what you have. on another hand, i understand there are strategic reasons as to why some nations would want to enforce a draft, and potentially could rely on it. i leave it up to the people of those nations to decide what it is they want.

it also doesn't mean it'll be good for everyone, and when you introduce someone to a situation where they may or may not spend the next half year completely miserable, the LEAST you can do is make an offer to bail out on the whole affair

I perhaps should clarify my argument, I’m not arguing for conscription here, I’m arguing that putting in place mandatory training similar to what US army officers go through would be at least as benefitial as the later years oh high school for most people. For conscription itself, the topic has been explored in depth in this thread already. I initially was thinking it was a good thing for South Korea but I’d say I’d need more time to think about the issues overall.

defending where i was raised and hope to live again is important to me, though i understand not everyone has the same values as i do. do what you believe to be right.

You seem to have some weird fantasy about the United States fighting a defensive war that is literally never going to happen.

But this thread is about South Korea which very well may have to defend not just their way to live, but their right to exist at all.

That's an intrinsically limited view of the situation. The region isn't being entrusted to anyone besides the USA and SK squads that are professional service. The reason for training up the populance is in the case of an invasion by NK/PRC. If all your civilians know how to fight and are familar with weapons then you can effectively mount armed resistance a lot easier than being forced to train in secret, etc.

Because drafting people who don't even really believe in what you're fighting for is a great idea! Oh wait.

you're reading more into my posts than is there. i don't think the US will ever need to fight a defensive war and haven't said I thought so.

There is no invading force, until there is you can't justify people being conscripted at a hunch or just in-case. The ideal outcome is no invasions, and no need for war, obviously it isn't the case but just because war is inevitable doesn't mean we should support it.