You can't contain your shock and anger at learning of what transpired at the army training and induction center in Nonsan, South Chungcheong Province. Angry that some toilets hadn't been flushed, a company commander made inductees place human feces in their mouths. It was an act of cruelty that someone with a sane state of mind would not have been able to commit. How humiliated those recent arrivals to the army must have felt! Imagine how parents who have sent or will be sending their sons to basic training? This must not be tolerated. Furthermore, the upper echelons of the Ministry of National Defense didn't even know about what had happened until ten days after the fact, after everyone was reading about it on the internet. That means there is a hole in the military's internal intelligence and communication practices.
The military has been saying it is going to work hard to eradicate acts of cruelty. It developed a program for improving the atmosphere in the barracks, including the stipulation that there be criminal punishment for any use of violence. Thanks to that effort, there is reportedly far less corporal punishment. The "human feces incident," however, show you that acts of cruelty have not been uprooted. How could someone responsible for training recruits abuse them with senseless behavior that is so insulting? What happened was too serious to write off as inadvertent misbehavior by a company commander out to instill discipline. Something must be done to clean up the culture of the military. Mostly there needs to be cultivation of democratic leadership and an awareness of the importance of civil rights. On Friday, National Defense Minister Yoon Kwang Woong promised "extraordinary measures." His words must not turn out to have been empty talk.
There needs to be a review of the system of command and how it handles information and reports. Anyone could tell you the "human feces incident" is a serious one is a serious one. It is not a simple matter than the ministry's top leadership did not immediately ascertain the details. It is the military's top leadership that is in need of better discipline. It committed errors when a North Korean patrol boat crossed over the Northern Limit Line (NLL) and reports about were not communicated properly, and one worries that we are seeing the same kind of thing again.
The Hankyoreh, 22 January 2005.
[Translations by Seoul Selection (PMS)]
[Editorial] There Are Still Cruel Acts in Military |
