Korean Job Discussion Forums

Real Reality · Joined: 10 Jan 2003 Location: Seoul

Tiberious aka Sparkles,

Guarding a wall? Do you have to eat fecal matter to guard a wall?

The suicide is likely to cause no small repercussions because it happened on the heels of the Korea Army Training Center incident, in which a company commander forced conscripts to eat human feces, and because it reveals that acts of cruelty are still practiced in the Army.

http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200502/200502070030.html

Tiberious aka Sparkles · Joined: 23 Jan 2003 Location: I'm one cool cat!

endofthewor1d · Joined: 01 Apr 2003 Location: the end of the wor1d.

Pyongshin Sangja · Joined: 20 Apr 2003 Location: I love baby!

Per capita, I would say that there is less consumption of human feces among those not enlisted in the Korean army than among those enlisted. I could be wrong.

OCOKA Dude · Joined: 04 Oct 2004 Location: Seoul

I work with the ROK Army and I served in the U.S. Army myself as an NCO, and I can tell you that the ROK Army is very much an officer-driven army, meaning that enlisted and NCOs will not do anything unless there's an officer giving them a direct order and supervising them every step of the way. So while many Koreans during their military service oftentimes develop a knee-jerk attitude toward blindly obeying orders as someone put it, which carries over into their civilian lives, at the same time, I find that the ROK conscript experience falls woefully short in teaching soldiers how to exercise initiative, assume responsibility, and display basic leadership skills, which can be found in an abundance among their enlisted counterparts in the U.S. military.

That being said, comparing the ROK Army with the U.S. Army -- where NCOs pretty much run the show with regards to the minutiae of garrison and barracks life as well as set the tone for conduct and professionalism within the ranks -- is like comparing apples and oranges. One of the reasons this is so is because in an all-volunteer force like the U.S. military, enlisted soldiers are encouraged to take the initiative, NCOs are taught to delegate, and officers have to trust their NCOs.

This leadership model, however, is NOT the case in all-draftee formation like the ROK Army (ROK Marines are different though in that they are more similar to an all-volunteer force). Consequently, you'll find that ROK Army officers trust their subordinates much less than in the U.S. (example: In the night when ROK units stand down and sack out during major exercises, ROK officers make their soldiers turn in their weapons to a central collection point b/c they fear that their soldiers might run off in the middle of the night armed and dangerous, or that they'll lose 'em. In the U.S. Army and Marine Corps., this kind of thing is unheard of -- every soldier secures his own weapon at nighttime during major maneuvers, exercises, deployments and field problems.

The point is that militaries are simply a microcosm of the society they come from. In the U.S. military, there's a lot more trust between NCOs and officers, because our culture breeds that trust -- it's ingrained in the American way of thinking, in our politics, in our media, in our educational institutions, in our bureacracies, and in our economy.

Conversely, the lack of trust that you see between Korean Army officers and enlisted in the ROK Army is a direct reflection of the social norms inherent in Korean society. Hopefully, though, this will change in the long run.

All in all, the ROK military experience is great for creating ultra-disciplined and focused young men (and increasingly women), enabling them to fit into a Korean-style, top-down, hierarchial society. However, in terms of creating genuinely autonomous and analytical thinkers, who are capable of complex problem solving or 'out-of-the-box-type thinking,' the ROK Army falls woefully short, especially in comparison to the U.S. military.

The ROK Army officer corps, however, is exceptional in creating effective small-unit leaders capable of functioning at a high level within a Korean, and increasingly, a global context. I find their communication (both Korean AND English), as well as their interpersonal skills, technical and tactical competency, to be on par -- and oftentimes in some cases -- even better than their U.S. counterparts.