It is famously known that the Korean peninsula has been divided after the Korean war outbroken due to differences in political ideology. It happened in the early morning of July 25th, 1950 by the invasion of North Korea, which continued for more than three years. Since the war has been paused, not ended, South Korea is in a situation where it has no other option but to have a strong military background in order to respond to potential military threats and defend itself. In this sense, mandatory military service in Korea is a big part of life to not only those who actually have to serve but also everyone since everyone has someone else who has to serve at some point in their life.
Except for the disabled, direct descendant of nationally acknowledged patriots, etc., all Korean males are subject to the duty of national defense, which is one of the five major civil duties in Korean law. The duration of the service is 18 months for the army, and 1 to 3 months longer for other branches such as navy, air force, and marine corps. They usually decide to serve after the freshman year during their college years (or around that period of time) since a pause in their career as long as at least 18 months is such a long interruption, which they want to minimize aftereffects.
There are some cultures that one can only experience in the military. First of all, I should mention the strict hierarchical structure in the military. All the people in the military are firstly distinguished by their ranks since it plays a big role in their identity, very similar to organizations and commercial companies but stricter. The military is administered by command and discipline; juniors must obey as seniors' order. It is very natural in this strictness that people get to become closer and closer to other people in the same rank, which is called 동기 (same rank colleague). These are the ones who they can usually find themselves to be close with since they can share their hardships and understand each other easily. This kind of relationship or fellowship is usually called ‘military comradeship’ and it sometimes carries on even after the military days.
There are a number of funs that soldiers can have in the military, often very different from the ones people would enjoy outside of the military. One of them is PX(postal exchange), which is a small store located in or close to military bases. PX gets products supplied at much cheaper prices and even without taxes. Soldiers enjoy satisfying their appetite with foods they buy in PX, as the quality of foods provided in the military is not the best (they are made in bulk by almost only soldiers) and also the menus in the cafeteria are repetitive. Sometimes they have a feast buying a haul of food, mostly including instant noodles with additional recipes, frozen products such as fried chicken, and beverages.
It is plausible that there are myriads of unique cultures in the military, even differing from base to base and from branch to branch since they spend their 18 months (or sometimes even more) in almost completely separate areas with completely different systems than the way they lived their life outside of the military. These military cultures sometimes have some toxic aspects, which are getting fixed as time passes in a growing interest in military/soldiers’ welfare. Also, there are tons of Korean cultures that are affected by mandatory military service. I hope I will have a chance to introduce them someday, and I want to end this article by acknowledging their time, devotion, and hard work in defending their country.
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