[Editorial] Uproot Acts of Cruelty in Military

An army private in a forward-deployed unit was found dead, having apparently hung himself after being assaulted by a senior enlisted man, two weeks after being assigned to his unit. It is horrific to have this happen less than a month since an incident at a training center in which inductees were made to taste human feces. It is shocking because it serves as evidence that acts of cruelty are a real threat not limited to training centers or deployed units, to officers or enlisted men. It feels even more unfortunate because Private Kang had volunteered for the army even though he qualified for an exemption from military conscription because his father was injured when he was in the military. Parents with children in the military must be unable to spend a single day in peace, to say nothing of the parents of the deceased.

The military authorities have tentatively determined that Kang died of suffocation. He was found hanging in the installation's boiler room, but his family suggests there was foul play and alleges the handwriting in the note he supposedly left behind is not his. They are demanding an expert comparison of the handwriting, and say they are suspicious because they do not understand how a man who is 185 centimeters tall can hang in a room that is only two meters high, how he got into the boiler room when his superior is in charge of it, and how it was that superior who was the first to find him. The authorities must engage in a full investigation and reveal the truth. We hope they are thoroughly aware of the fact that it has been the military's wrongful practice of minimizing the significance of deaths in the military, avoiding responsibility, and hurrying to close those cases while concluding that they are suicides is what has caused so many deaths in the military to be held suspect.

Even if Kang's death was a suicide the fundamental cause was violence within the military. If someone who chose to go to the army later chose suicide, it must have been not only because of an individual case of assault by a superior, but because he felt desperation in the face of acts of cruelty that seem to surround him. You wonder if this is what has to be the result of the decision to establish a "civil rights improvement commission" in Army Headquarters and "civil rights consulting offices" at army installations. According to documentation submitted to the National Assembly in 2000 as part of the Assembly's annual audit of government affairs, approximately 300 servicemen die in the military every year, and around 100 of those deaths are suicides. This backwards military culture, which disregards the civil rights and individual dignity of its people, must be uprooted.

The Hankyoreh, 11 February 2005.

[Translations by Seoul Selection (PMS)]