Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Stout]

The Korean article reported the bullying as "alleged". The New York Times article confirms that investigators came to the conclusion that bullying was indeed involved.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/31/world/asia/31marines.html?pagewanted=all

SEOUL, South Korea � �If anyone could be a marine, I�d never have joined.� That is the slogan of South Korea�s Marine Corps, and it speaks volumes about the force�s sense of its elite status; it is a particularly bold assertion in a country where most able-bodied men perform mandatory military service.

These days, however, that marine pride, and the discipline of the South Korean military in general, has come under uncomfortable scrutiny.

In June, some marines fired their rifles toward a civilian passenger plane approaching the Seoul airport, mistaking it for a North Korean aircraft in an episode that has raised questions about the marines� training and preparedness. (Fortunately, they did not hit the plane.)

But a series of very different episodes that followed in quick succession this month have proved even more troubling for many South Koreans.

On July 4, a marine corporal who investigators said was bullied by others in his barracks went on a shooting rampage, killing four marines and wounding a fifth. On July 10, a marine private hanged himself. Bruises, possibly from an earlier beating, were found on his chest. Four days later, a marine master sergeant killed himself, also by hanging.

[Julius]

[Stout]

Also these are societies where this tone of intolerance is purposively set from above, in order to ensure that the majority of citizens remain malleable to the designs of those on top.

[CentralCali]

Wow, Stout, you really know how to make an accurate thread title. At least, that would be the case in an alternate universe. In this one, your thread title does not describe reality. The corporal was sentenced to death for murder.

We get it. You hate the military, any military, all military. That does not mean you can just toss out anything at all and expect it to be considered factual.

[Stout]

[CentralCali]

The event itself isn't something you tossed out there. Your thread title certainly is. Try being completely accurate in what he was actually punished for: murder. Your choice of wording is disingenuous.

And this bs from you

[Julius]

[NovaKart]

Really sad that a mentally unstable young man is forced into the military and subject to abuse. And then people wonder why this happens.

[CentralCali]

[TheUrbanMyth]

[Captain Corea]

[Steelrails]

Every military on Earth has bullying and hazing and every military on Earth has people who occasionally go nuts and start shooting.

Simple mathematics dictates it. You get 25,000 young men together, you're going to get occasional violence and nutballs. Frankly, I'm surprised more incidents like this don't happen in the military.

Now the bigger issue is whether this young man should have been screened out. No system is 100% perfect, but if there were blatant red flags, then there should be a look at the system in place.

[Stout]

Okay, for all those who interpret "alleged bullying" to be a smoke screen for something else/can't get their head around the fact that basic reforms need to be considered regarding what goes on in the Korean military (a fact which the South Korean defence ministry has come out and aknowledged themselves)-

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-14448486

Becoming a man means becoming a soldier - at least that is what the army in South Korea says. But a spate of deaths is leading some to call for wholesale change in the way the military operates.

Military service is a rite of passage here, and most new army conscripts begin their service at the army's main training base in Nonsan, playing ear-splitting war-games under the watchful eye of Colonel Kim Hyung-gyul.

Military training has been tightened in South Korea this year. An attack by North Korea last November refocused attention on the country's armed forces - largely composed of conscripts - and led to calls for a tougher response.

Col Kim said there were already concerns within the military that the new recruits were softer than in the past and less adaptable to military life.

The training, he said, has been intensified and focused into specific areas, to make the soldiers battle-ready.

"Each recruit is individually checked as an incentive to train harder," he said.

All this training is to prepare the new recruits for external enemies, but the military is also facing a threat from within; a barracks culture that some say is helping to kill its soldiers before a real shot has been fired.

Last month, a marine corporal shot and killed four of his comrades. He said he was being bullied.

Several other soldiers killed themselves in the weeks that followed. Since then, South Korea's defence ministry has brought out new orders banning beating, cruelty, humiliation and bullying within the armed forces, to tackle what it calls a "distorted military culture".

Calls to military helplines have shot up since the recent spate of deaths. But the issue of soldiers dying in their barracks has overshadowed the military here for decades. And the deaths have often been left unexplained.

Basic rights

Chai Yeil-pyung and Park Eun-eui lost their youngest son 10 years ago, while he was on military service. Despite several investigations, they still do not know how he died.

"If the nation calls upon our sons, it has a duty to return them safe and sound," said Mr Chai.

"But for us to be left like this, not knowing even the cause of my son's death, I think that's a great betrayal of a citizen and a parent."

Five years ago, a presidential commission was set up to investigate suspicious deaths in the military.

Kim Ho-chul was one of the investigators. In the past, he says, it was clear the army had "an instinct of self-preservation".


There are concerns new recruits are softer than in the past, and less adaptable to military life Investigations, he said, were often "very insufficient" and there was "a lack of will to seek the truth, and a lack of explanations for the family".

In the past 30 years, he said, the number of non-combat deaths has fallen dramatically - from 800 a year, to around 100. But while military investigations into these deaths have improved, he said attitudes on the ground still need to change.

"There needs to be a major change in thinking towards soldiers in the first place," he said. "They are citizens in uniform, and I think there needs to be a better awareness of their basic rights."

Questions and discussions about these type of issues need to be raised. Nitpicking about the title, interpretations of lexicon used in the article, allegations of some misplaced agenda, simply are attempts to take away/deflect from the basic issue.

The basic pattern that emerges is that certain posters are afraid and uncomfortable with questions being raised about situations which call into question the hegemony of Western military-industrial complex/geo-political-related institutions and practices. When it is clearly seen what human misery and pollution/depletion of the earth's resources results from these practices, one can only wonder at why anyone who isn't somehow tied into the money-flow of such destructive practices would continue to support such policies.

[Captain Corea]

[Enrico Palazzo]