Men in Korea have to enter the military for two years. It is their duty to do it. Some people say that they are sacrificing their two years, and need to be rewarded, while other says that it is their duty, and they should be proud of it. In my opinion I surely agree that they should receive some incentives. However I think military incentive policy which gives extra points to discharged soldiers is a discrimination against women, the disabled, and also among men.

First of all, military incentive policy gives restriction to the women and the disabled who enter the public service. As every body knows, the test to become a civil servant is fiercely competitive, and the borderline pass to the exam is extremely high. The reality is that people get to pass and fail by a narrow margin. However if the government give extra points for each subject, this will give a decisive effect on the results, and this is the same as excluding people who can not receive military incentives, who are usually women and the disabled. One research shows that when the military incentive policy is carried out, the percentage of people who pass the exam and don’t have extra points can actually decrease.

Secondly, the military incentive policy is a discrimination among men too. Military incentive policy does not have effectiveness, since the range of the application is too small. That is, only men who take the civil service exam or apply for specific companies like LG or Samsung can take advantage of this system because only public enterprises adopt this system. For the rest of discharged soldiers who do not apply for positions in public sector, there is no compensation at all. Consequently, even though the rest of men were equally discharged upon completing their military service, they cannot receive any compensation for their military service.

Last of all, the military incentive policy is just a symbolic policy because the military incentives is not enough to make up for the military services experience and it’s not a practical compensation. Some people might think that a symbolic policy is also important to us. However, the military incentive policy is an obstacle to make a practical compensation. Therefore, we need to get rid of the symbolic system and find a realistic policy which is based on the financial and spiritual compensations. Actually when the minister of national defenses surveyed the 1113 soldiers, most of the soldiers wanted practical policies such as financial aid, tax reduction, and so on. And only 37% of the soldiers wanted the military incentives

I am not insisting that we should not reward the discharged soldiers. I think the military incentive policy is just not the right system to give advantage to all the discharged soldiers. We should find other compensations that can encourage people to enter the military and raise the fighting spirit in the army.