On October 26th, “Alternative service” was started. Alternative service is the service for the people who object to serving in the military due to personal beliefs such as religious faith or nonviolence. It allows them to serve in public services such as correctional institutions instead of military service.

The International Society and organizations of human rights continuously argued that alternative service is necessary to impose on the nations conducting compulsory military service. However, South Korea was one of the countries that were not responding to these demands appropriately. The government attempted to adopt an alternative service in 2007, but 68% of the opinion poll respondents opposed, and it was temporarily suspended. Public opinion was even continued until 2014, as evidence, 58.3% of the opinion poll respondents opposed. In June 2018, the Constitutional Court of Korea was found “unconstitutional” to the 5th article of the Military Service Act due to the reason that there is no alternative service for conscientious objectors, and finally, in June of this year, the very first group serving alternative service was recruited.

The Ministry of Justice (MOJ) focused on securing equability with the people serving in the military even if they allowed alternative service. Considering the concern that alternative service could be abused to avoid military service, the period of alternative service is 36 months, two times longer than general military service. Conscientious objectors perform physical labors such as providing meals and facility management. However, they are barred from the duties that violate the beliefs, such as protecting the facilities using weapons or monitoring criminals which sometimes involves violence. For the last, conscientious objectors in this year is about 103, and MOJ said that they would expand housing facilities to serve up to 1,600 alternative service members by 2022.

Oh Young-Geun (Prof. of School of Law, Hanyang University), “The implementation of an alternative service system will be a great turning point as an aspect of respecting various beliefs. However, the majority of the first alternative servers are believers of a certain religion. It is necessary to enact the expanded criteria for the establishment of alternative service as soon as possible to make the society respecting various beliefs.”

By Ryu Sang-A, Reporter

sang_s00n@pusan.ac.kr