Celebrities in the Military and their Special Privileges

          I talked about mandatory military service in South Korea in my previous blog post, and now I want to narrow it down to celebrity recruits and the privilege that they are allowed to have.

          Se7en and Mighty Mouth's Sangchu made headlines as they greatly took advantage of their privilege of going out when they're doing service for the country. Needless to say, I was one of all of the people who criticized their actions. 

          But what confuses me more is, why should celebrities get special privileges in the military? Before a celebrity is a celebrity, they're a human-being. So the likelihood of them getting injured in the military is the same for them too, even if they're stars. But the fact that they're allowed more leisure-times and whatnot because of their careers seem more than unfair to me. What about the men of other professions - aren't they of importance too? I don't know, maybe those other men do get special privileges, but I've only heard about celebrities exploiting their privilege.

            Take for example a great model, actor Yoo Seung Ho who rejected enlisting as a special celebrity recruit but rather just another recruit, and now he's risen to be an assistant instructor. 

          Again, needless to say, there's a clear difference between him and Se7en and Sangchu. And I shouldn't just pick on those two as other celebrities have taken advantage of their special privileges. I'm just glad that the Korean government finally found it necessary to change up their policies.

         Any Korean boy's fear or excitement, depending on the individual, is enlisting in the military someday. But I've encountered more Korean boys that are dreading military enlistment than boy that are anticipating it. I briefly talked about how mandatory military service has been part of the Korean culture so long that, theoretically, it could someday be abolished once and for all, but the very thought of it is odd. Korean fathers telling their sons about their time in the military, talks of how to prepare for enlistment, and etc. are all a part of Korean culture and the fact that a celebrity can skimp out on it because you have a lot of fans just sound unjust to me. 


(370)