Military service in Korea, according the hundreds of Korean men I have spoken to, is a tedious period of social

and physical deprivation. And it is dangerous. Every year scores of young Korean men are killed while

performing tasks such as serving in flood rescue operations and fighting off rabid demonstrators

on the streets of Seoul. Yet these fallen heroes receive no tribute. No monuments are erected in their honor.

Their deaths are footnotes
in the news.

What makes the front pages of newspapers and the top stories in TV news shows in their stead?

Feature stories about young women at elite officer training academies and their "bravery" in being women

trying to make it in the Korean military.

Always in these pieces, which seem to dominate the media now every
Veteran""s Day the same way the several dozen American nurses who served in the Vietnam war now own

that holiday in America, there is some feminist expert holding forth on the natural right of women to get

the top prestige jobs in the military. It never ceases to amaze me how the expert never mentions requiring

women to share in the hardships of the rank and file. The only conclusion to be drawn from such blatant

omissions is that Korea""s feminists believe that the dangerous and thankless service of Korea""s half a million

grunts is "men""s work."

In her In My View piece, Sohn Jung-min displayed classic feminist reasoning: Men should not be compensated, Sohn claimed,

for their military service because women have such hard lives already. Sohn even went so far as to say

that the government should compensate women for doing housework and having babies,

but should not give men a single won for their 26 months of military service.

Does this make sense to anyone with a brain not poisoned by radical
feminism? Does the government force women to have babies? Who benefits more from having a baby,

the woman who becomes a mother or the government? Yet, how many young men would go through 26-months of unpaid military hell if the law didn""t force them to.

I am sure Sohn""s absurd arguments brought cheers among all those horribly disadvantaged young

women at Ehwa University who were responsible for initiating the lawsuit that killed the test bonus and

subsequently destroyed the morale of the nation""s fighting men.

But how is it that some pampered Ewha princess with her cell phone and European vacations has the gall to

claim that some working class young man fresh out of getting bottles and rocks thrown

at his skull for 26 months of riot police duty is more "privileged" than she in this society?

Feminism would really be good for some laughs if hadn""t ruined the ability to reason in so many.

What truly amazes me in this whole affair is that Korean men have not been more militant in their

response to the court""s decision to strip away the lone benefit of their service. The Herald editorial

writers were shocked that a website got hacked; I am surprised there hasn""t been a full-scale revolt of the armed forces.

What are these men risking their lives for? A constitution and a nation that doesn""t forbid the use of young able-bodied men as slave labor （young soldiers are called out to save the land of wealthy farmers

in the rainy season）, but absolutely forbids the awarding of 3 to 5 percent in extra points for veterans

on a test for the lowest possible positions in the government because it offends the sensibilities

of Ewha princesses? Moreover, what is the big deal about an extra three to five percent in points on a test.

It seems to me that such a miniscule gap could easily be closed with a little bit of extra study.

Oh, I forgot, feminism is not about giving women a chance to prove themselves; it is about giving women

things because they are women.

Were feminism worth the paper its manifestos are printed on, Korea""s women would be fighting to require

that all women be drafted as well as men to serve the nation for 26 months. But don""t anyone hold

his or her breath on that one. The Ehwa princesses would absolutely die if they had to wear nothing but
green for two years, and the Korean courts, no doubt, would be sensitive to their pain.

분이 코리아 헤럴드에 남긴 글이다.