Six of 10 Korean soldiers believe there’s little or no chance of a war breaking out on the Korean Peninsula, reported the Dong-A Ilbo.
Moreover, six of 10 soldiers said that with brisk exchanges taking place between the two Koreas since the June 2000 intra-Korean summit, the military needed to change its view of North Korea from an enemy to a partner. This is leading some to express concern about weakening vigilance within the military.
These results, obtained from a National Intelligence Service survey of 616 soldiers on leave taken at train stations and bus terminals in major cities around the country, were obtained by the Dong-A Ilbo.
Some 50.5 percent of respondents said there was little chance of a war breaking out on the Korean Peninsula, while 9.5 percent said there was no possibility at all.
In particular, 94 of 126 first and second-class privates serving in rear areas said there was no chance of a war breaking out. On the other hand, 90 of 187 corporals and sergeants serving in front-line areas believe war is possible. This indicated the Korean soldier’s sense of security depended on rank and area of deployment.
Meanwhile, some 63.2 percent said that even if the military maintained a sense of wariness, it needed to view the North as a partner. 36.8 percent said the North still needed to designated an enemy and prepared for as such.
Some 50 percent of the soldiers surveyed said they felt "a lot of pride" about serving in the military, while 12.4 percent said they felt "more or less proud." 37.5 percent, on the other hand, said they felt little pride about being a soldier.
Finally, 38.4 percent said that since a number of unfortunate incidents last year, including a deadly shooting spree at a DMZ guard post and a boot camp scandal involving an officer who forced recruits to eat human feces, there as been little change in the quality of barracks life, while 24 percent said military life has actually gotten tougher as authorities try to impose military discipline.
9 Comments
The young soldiers haven’t been in long enough…with age, most Koreans realize that the spectre of war must be kept alive in order to prevent unification and the resulting loss of GNP, as well as to keep the welfare checks coming from the United States.
As long as South Korea and China ensure that North Korea has a pulse, there will always be a superficial prospect for war. The delicate trick is to keep North Korea weak enough so that both war and unification never happen, and yet strong enough to prevent collapse of the regime.
This is the loyal duty of Minifiction (Ministry of Unification).
Teacher’s union at its best. Kim Il-sung started it, the teachers will finish it. This is what is taught in the public schools. Can’t really blame the students, they believe what they are told, and no one is ever taught how to connect the dots, that would actually involve thinking, and thinking is not highly regarded here.
Gillian, you are right. I think, though, that the pendulum is starting to swing back, though. Roh and his leftist buddies have overstepped their bounds and they’re do for a correction.
Anyway, these views are ephemeral. Polls are good at measuring where fluid opinion was the week before (or else John Kerry would be president). As soon as North Korea pulls one of its stunts, it will swing the other way, at least for a while.
I also think that this poll reflects what may be the wishful thinking of people currently in the military who want for North Korea to be a friend and partner. These men are not volunteers; whether desiring to serve their country or not, they are required to serve in a service that scares them and in which there is a very realistic chance that they might die, even in “peacetime.” Some people, a lot of people, create a mental defense mechanism to deal with that.
The popular media is sometimes a good barometer of sentiment in a society–Korea has gone from depicting N. Koreans as malevolent to more and more human, like in “J.S.A.” and
“Welcome to Dongmakgol.” But there’s an obvious lopsided exchange going on, like David Scofield pointed out a couple years ago:
“It appears very altruistic and humane, but it does leave one important question unanswered. What if the other side doesn’t change its views or moderate its stance? What if one side lowers its guard, engages the other as an equal partner and not as a belligerent, but the other side remains hostile? Portraying Pyongyang as an insecure brother, a misunderstood weaker sibling that only needs the right reassurances and enticements to break its half-century of hostility and jingoism toward the South, is a high-stakes gamble. If North Korea does not moderate its perceptions and depictions of its neighbor to the south - and there’s precious little evidence that it will - then North Korea will hold a strategic advantage against the overly pliant South - the tail wagging the dog.
Nor does South Korea’s engagement policy encourage discussion of North Korea’s gulags, or its illicit trade in human labor, drugs, weapons and counterfeit currency.”
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/FH03Dg03.html
It would actually be better for eventual detente if the South didn’t smooth over the realities of the North’s oppression of it people and threat to the region–if the men doing military service had a realistic view of the North, it might give them a sense of mission instead of vague anxiety, and the North would not be able to play the “Korean brother” card so easily.
Michael, dead on the money. What’s alarming is South Korean military’s slow disintegration of discipline. Momma boy who couldn’t handle the army shoots up the barracks, ordinary robbers rob military guards’ weapons, now a thief just went around a military installation and made off with weapons and ammos with no guards in sight and no one noticing that something was missing for 5 hours (utterly unforgivable and unbelievable). If the soldiers don’t believe that war is possible and that North Korean soldiers on the other side are partners, and the SK soldiers are there where they don’t want to be, this is the result.
I wonder how many ROK soldiers out of 10 are metrosexuals?
Kimbob I have to disagree with you on the “slow disintegration of discipline” in the SK military. Have you ever served in the Korean military? Or have you just heard old timers talking about how milky weak the young soldiers of this gerneration are? Because that’s usually the case. If you look at the actual stats, you will realize that the modern SK military is a lot more professional, and better in every aspect than the military of the past. Of course there is still far to go, but where in the world did you get the idea that that the level of the military is sliding?
All the military mishaps you’ve just mentioned are issues that we are able to know today because they are aired for everybody to see, unlike the past. Did you know there was a bigger “momma boy who couldn’t handle….: catastrophe during the late ’70s that was kept under wraps? I can go on with bigger and nastier mishaps that happend with such frequency that they were considered the norm back then.
I do realize that there may be a problem where the sentiments of SK changes about the north and become less wary(esp. looking at it from a national security military persective) but that is a national perspective changing with the tide of time, and has nothing to do with the disintegration of discipline in the military as you argue. That was a statement not based on actual data and knowledge of the Korean military. As for the news, that is what they do best. Air all the gruesome details about the mistakes. They are no longer the PR branch of the government brainwashing the citizens of how great their military is. It really is an irony when you think about it. When the media was showing how great the Korean military was, it was actually pretty ragtag, and now when it is actually improving itself at brisk pace all the media wants to show are the mishaps. But I guess that comes with democracy
When are these idiots going to realise that this is exactly the Dear Leader’s plan. However, it is nothing new. I heard the same thing in 1994, when South Korea was a VERY different, and BETTER, place.
Umm well, they haven’t seen a major war in over 50 years, so they proably don’t expect one anytime soon.