C.What complications would ensue if pop stars were granted exemption from mandatory military service? Should they be exempted? On what grounds? [Be careful to make a strong argument and relate your essay to academic articles].
Korea’s cultural politics saying that men have to go through military in order to become a real man, continues to justify the continued existence of conscription for almost 70 years (Yeo 2017, 293). But Son Heung-min who is a Korean football player was exempt from his mandatory military service due to his victory in the Asian Games football tournament. Though Son no longer has to complete his military service, this does not mean he is not a man. Korean men are offered exemptions from military service if they win gold at the Asian Games, or a medal of any colour at the Olympics because these athletes bring pride and glory to the South Korea name, representing the country international.
I believe that male Korean pop stars should be granted exemption from their mandatory military service if they are able to bring in the same pride and glory to their country. An example of a male pop star who brought many peoples attention to Korean pop music internationally is Psy. Psy’s Gangnam style helped him gain international fame but his career almost ended back in 2007 due to a scandal about his mandatory military service (Yeo 2017, 294). Even the thought of shirking military service is considered to be scandalous and may end your celebrity career overnight. In the end, Psy had to serve a total of 55 months in the South Korean military when the mandatory expected amount is only 21 months. Psy originally was supposed to be exempt from his military service because his technical expertise work served the national interest, but then later a complication developed, and many people said that Psy had neglected his work because he was holding concerts and appearing on television which eventually lead to this scandal. I found this to be very unfair because Psy was still an artist who had to release songs and promote them, even though he was still serving the national interest with his technical expertise work. I believe Psy should still have been exempt from military service and should not have done 55 months of military service which is considerably greater than the standard amount.
Currently South Korea is debating whether internationally successful K-pop groups like BTS should be exempt from their mandatory military service or not. A complication would arise if BTS were to be exempt from military service because previous internationally successful K-pop groups did not receive this treatment, which would be unfair for earlier successful groups who is currently serving in the military or already finished their service like Big Bang. Even though complications may arise, I still believe that Korea should make a change and allow Korean pop stars to be exempt from their mandatory military service if they are able to achieve specific international achievements, like BTS winning an award at Billboard Music Awards. These specific international achievements would be able to help set a standard for other male Korean pop stars to work towards, if they want to be exempt from their military service. Just like in sports, if artists in the music industry can bring in the same honour to South Korea by winning big international music awards like Billboard Music Awards, I believe those artists should be exempt from their mandatory military service as well.
References
Yeo, Yezi. “The Good the Bad and the Forgiven: The Media Spectacle of South Korean Male Celebrities’ Compulsory Military Service.” Media, War and Conflict, (2017): 293-313.
Ivan Pang #71126650
Asia327 Dean 
Hi Ivan, totally agree with your points and I also think that idols should be able to be exempt from the military. Personally, I don’t agree with mandatory military enlistment either way and find that Koreas system of only exempting men who achieve certain things unfair. I’ve read that winning international music competitions can be a means of exemption and considering that idols make music it seems irrational to me why they’re achievements aren’t valued in the same way. Considering the wide-spread popularity of K-pop technically idols are bringing much more honour to Korea when compared to a winner of a concours. Also recently Korea has allowed conscientious objectors of military service the option to opt out of service and do alternatives like volunteering at a homeless shelter. I think this is an awesome step because this shows that Korea is slowly opening up to the idea of shortening or even getting rid of military service in general. Prior to this the main reason why I was against mandatory inscription was due to conscientious objectors, I always thought it was unfair to force people to do something for their country. In the case of idols this would’ve been even worse as they wouldn’t be able to vocalize their thoughts due to fear of backlash. Even though alternatives are allowed not I doubt any celebrity in Korea would take up the offer because backlash would definitely follow. Hopefully the government will soon change their policies to be more equal and fair towards all sorts of achievements. Technically at the moment the government is saying a world renowned billboard music award is considered “less important” than a classical music award. This shows that Korea considers classical music to be above main stream pop music and thus is being classicist. As Kpop becomes more and more popular and brings in larger amounts of foreign investment I’m sure the government will start to revise their policies. Although when this happens I’m sure the artists that take it up may face harsh criticism from the public, especially from male citizens.
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Why not just argue that the time for mandatory enlistment for all men should end?
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With the situation with North Korea (hopefully) winding down, it may very well be possible that the government will loosen up on these restrictions for K-pop stars. I agree, if the rule of exemption is simply “those who bring pride and glory to Korea”, than yes, there is no one more qualified for exemption than BTS though some sort of set goal would have to be decided upon.
As Ivan alluded to with the story about Psy, the real question is whether or not the Korean public would accept this. I don’t get soccer, but I can understand why soccer or Olympic medals would be seen as reason for exemption. These activities are physical sports which require high amounts of dedication and training. The players clearly wear the flag and compete against other countries for glory of their country. However, classical musicians also qualify for this; why a classical musician is exempt but a global pop star is not is beyond me. Why would the public accept a classical pianist over a k-pop star? I don’t understand why Psy would be lambasted for his service while a classical musician who skips it would not. My only guess is that classical music is somehow more traditionally prestigious despite the lack of interest from the masses.
It may be that the government wants to keep Korea’s biggest stars going to the military. The argument for conscription (other than filling the ranks) is that it helps with nation building, so having the biggest names in K-pop dutifully serve their country was probably considered helpful to the cause. Idols are something to be idolized so perhaps the government does not exempt them in hopes that they will be good role models. The way I see it, mandatory conscription should probably just be dropped in favour of a better funded professional army and with talks with North Korea going on we may just see it happen but I’m worried that the Korean people won’t accept it, at least not right away. That being said, something that has become clear to me over the period of this course is that we can never underestimate the power of the fandom and with increasingly global fans, we may see a shift in attitudes towards mandatory service.
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Although I understand that from the fans’ perspective, seeing their idols were sent to military service could be heartbreaking. However, I believe it wouldn’t be a good choice if Korean wants to stick to the current military service system from the country’s perspective.
Ivan suggested that K-pop idols need to be granted exemption from their mandatory military service if they are able to bring in the same pride and glory to their country, but I doubt it would be nearly impossible for Korea to judge what should be count as same pride and glory for K-pop idols. The athletes need to be really skilled to win gold at the Asian Games and everybody can see how you win it. It is even impossible to fake the prize as there are professional judges and the prize is also related to other countries’ pride. Which means this kind of glory is strictly supervised and could be really proved to bring the same pride to the country. Whereas huge prizes for the entertainment industry like Billboard Music Awards are not as convincing as the last one. The whole evaluation standard is pretty ambiguous and different awards may have different ways to determine who’s going to win the prize which may not convince the public to believe that the idols win glory for their country. Even worse, many global awards are accused of being bribed and injustice even nowadays, and those people who are unsatisfied with the results would mostly be fans instead of the vast majority. The complaints will eventually end up merely a ripple. This makes the whole faking prizes process easy and would become a huge bug and being used by those companies who want to squeeze every last bit of value out of their employees or the idols who are simply just afraid of military service. Another thing is that, from some Korean citizens’ eyes (especially the male citizens), being an athlete and win a sports champion makes that person a “real man” whereas idols are just pretty empty vases trying to satisfy the female audience with their appearance. They won’t recognize the idols success; at least they don’t think they don’t have to serve the military because of this sort of success. Practicing the military service free method will only rouse voice of disagreement under this condition.
Well, what I mean was that granted exemption from their mandatory military service would not work for the current system. I personally don’t agree with the system, though.
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From my point of view, I hold a different view of Ivan’s. I think pop stars should not be granted exemption from mandatory military service as it can be unfair in some aspects.
In the past few years, a specific type of soldiers called ‘art soldier’ was existed to fulfill the demand of Korean pop stars, in other words, idols used to be given some special priority in the Korean’s army. The existence of the art soldier is to perform in the events in the army which means they don’t have to be really trained as a soldier. Moreover, they usually have the doubled leave allowances compared to other soldiers. The ‘art soldier’ system was banned due to the successive scandal of Korean famous pop stars like Rain and Se7en. They used the advantage of this special system in the army to benefit themselves which has caused a huge negative impact on the Korean army. If the benefit system has faced widespread public anger, then it is difficult for the government to grant exemption from mandatory military service of pop stars.
Also, the standard mentioned in Ivan’s argument which can bring in the same pride and glory compared to athletes is ambiguous when it comes to pop stars. Like we know that BTS has won an award at Billboard Music Awards, and this has been a major support in the debate of whether BTS members should be given the right to exempt from mandatory military service. Although Billboard Music Awards is a major award in the music industry, it is hard to say that it has the same significance compared to the Olympics. Moreover, an award is not only given based on the standard of their music achievement, but also the number of their fans. Unlike athletes, their achievement is directly related to their training on a specific sport, an award can also be given to pop stars if their fans vote for them through day and night. I think a major reason for the exemption of athletes is due to the perfect training time for athletes is especially short, the time for them to break records is extremely short so their need 100% focus on their training.
To sum up, I think pop stars should not be given the exemption of military service as the standard of price and glory they bring in is ambiguous.
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Actually, I have opposite view of pop star exemption problem. And I think that there is no any reasonable interpretation that can let a normal healthy man escape from mandatory military service.
Although those pop star receive attention from the public and maybe there are million of fans loving him so much. To the country, he is just a normal citizen, and being a citizen, obeying the law is necessary, especially when he is a famous person, what he do is really make deep effect to the social public.
There was a famous TV program, 진짜 사나이 which is about the life in military service. To the public, the military service are such a nightmare for them, especially for man. It is hard and strict, and you may get insult no matter who you are.
To those pop star, military service is also a kind of way to show their loyalty to there country and sometime even whether he is a good man. Actually, there was some news, for example TOP, have been said that not actively attend the military service(he just only attend vigilante because of some kind of illness), and was criticized heavily by the public, and also rain have do those issue before.
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Hey Ivan
I totally agree with you when you say that K-Pop stars bring in just as much pride and glory to Korea as do Korean national athletes and therefore should be exempted. However, as mentioned in the lecture, the whole point or the biggest point of conscription in the last 70 years besides the “right of passage” is to have a prepared military to fight off the dangers that is literally across the border, North Korea. So exempting men because they bring pride to their country isn’t justified because if war breaks out, that pride isn’t gonna be what saves South Korea. Back to the idols having the right to be exempted, one of the objections to military service was “interruption to careers.” I think we can safely argue that if anyone would get a big interruption in their career, it would be the Idols. If we look at BTS, look how far they’ve come in a matter of a year, if hypothetically they spent that time in military service, they might’ve missed the chance to be noticed by the western world thus losing the greatest achievement in their careers. As we have learned in the course, time is a key factor and vital in the fame world. When it comes to military service, Idols seem especially targeted for protecting or fighting for their rights and an example of this is celebrity scandals. Although any man is subjected to punishment if they try to escape their military service, it is so much worst for celebrities. Why? Because they are famous. So not only is it an interruption to their career but they risk their whole career and fame because the whole country will punish them. I understand why the South Korean government pushes for conscription especially because their military service is shrinking and therefore is endangering the country of an invasion from North Korea. But some reforms definitely need to be made from who is exempted (wealth/status/athletes) to the quality of the military (food, shelter, etc).
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