"Militarized Masculinity" and the Conscientious Objector Movement

Volume 7 | Issue 12 | Number 1 | Article ID 3087 | Mar 16, 2009 The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Militarism and Anti-militarism in South Korea: "Militarized Masculinity" and the Conscientious Objector Movement. Vladimir Tikhonov Militarism and Anti-militarism in South Korea: include revolutionary and post-revolutionary “Militarized Masculinity” and the Conscientious France (which began the history of modern Objector Movement. conscription by declaring the levée en masse on August 23, 1793), and the Prussian state, Vladimir Tikhonov (Pak Noja) which began introducing French-style conscription practices after suffering a defeat Korea – "a national defense/conscription state" at the hands of Napoleon’s conscript army in 1806-1807.3 In more recent times, the state of It is a well-known fact that warfare and Israel successfully used a comprehensive obligatory military service system long played conscription system applicable to both men and decisive role in the formation of modern nation- women. The conscription system inculcated states, first in Europe and later elsewhere in Zionist ideals and the newly-forged Israeli the world. While externally the military national identity, as well as a siege mentality prowess of a given state was (and still is) based upon the imperative of the “national decisive for defining its place in a competitive defense” against the demonized Arabic/Muslim international system explicitly based upon an world, into the minds of a very heterogeneous equilibrium of military force and hegemonic 4 1 body of citizens, In South Korea too, as we will interstate relations, internally conscription- see below, conscription provides an ideological based national armies formerly served as main fiction of equality, the exclusion of women from pillars of the state, linking conscript-age able- the conscription system and, consequently, 1 bodied males with the nationalist ethos and much more manifestly the “hegemonic acculturating them to views and practices often masculine” character of the army being an referred to as “militarized masculinity culture”. important difference. “Militarized masculinity”, both in the conscription states and in states possessing While the classical militarized masculinity of large-scale military but relying upon athe nineteenth century conscription states volunteer force in peacetime, usually involves tended to grant able-bodied male “nationals”, both a gendered view of the world in which the as potential soldiers, a privileged place in the able-bodied man, the “defender of the“national” discursive hierarchy, it marked all fatherland”, was unconditionally privileged resisters and evaders, actual and potential, over women, defined either as sexualized either as ideological delinquents lacking loyalty objects or as child-rearing “mother of the to the “nation”, or as moral delinquents placing nation”, and a shared feeling of superiority their personal well-being above “national towards men unfit for or unwilling to engage in interests”. Both resisters and evaders became combat (handicapped, conscientious objectors, an easy target for often extremely violent in- etc.).2 Examples of modern states which chose group exclusion, which was supposed to to define their whole able-bodied male citizenry “strengthen the national spirit” and prevent as potential soldiers and use conscription as any further deviations from dominant the primary instrument of “creating nationals”, ideological and behavioral forms. In heavier 1 7 | 12 | 1 APJ | JF militarized and illiberal states like pre-World 1888). One of the young reformist intellectuals War I Germany, predominantly religious charged with editing Hansǒng Sunbo, Yu Kiljun military objectors – the members of such (1856-1914), included a detailed account of the minority peace churches as the Mennonites and conscription system in his encyclopedic Sǒyu Adventists – were subject to routine abuse, Kyǒnmun (A Record of Personal Experiences in imprisonment and scornful press coverage, as the West). Explaining that, unlike the “non-patriots”.5 In France after defeat in the continental European countries, the US and war with Germany in 1870-71 and before World Britain used voluntary recruitment in War I, draft resistance was viewed as sacrilege, peacetime, he also emphasized the “warlike unacceptable rebellion against basicspirit” of the Anglo-Saxon countries by adding Republican values,6 While the “official” that Britons and Americans “receive military nationalisms in pre-World War I France and training when they are not busy, in such a Germany used each other in order to create an manner that all citizens become soldiers”. He image of an implacable external enemy, all stressed also that conscription of the French or those deviating from the norms of militarized German type “equally makes both noble and nationalist masculinity were conceptualized as base, rich and poor join the colours” and that an internal threat to the nation’s defense and the essence of keeping a modern standing its very existence. The negative otherization of army, conscript or voluntary, is in training and all who were unwilling to conform to the disciplining the soldiers, singling out the dominant militarist ethos became an organic Japanese conscript soldiers, “known for part of the general nationalist worldview of sometimes getting into trouble with the police” continental 19th century European conscription as not yet well enough trained.7 Modern states. A similar worldview has been used by military – and the continental conscript armies the South Korean elite in order to consolidate were obviously seen as among the predominant society on the anti-communist andtypes of modern military – was viewed by Yu as developmentalist platform, create a climate of one of the main components of “civilization”. uniformity and conformity and prevent the These views were essentially shared by the emergence of deviations from dominant modes influential courtier and diplomat, Min of thinking and behavior. Yǒnghwan (1861-1905), who concluded that universal conscription made Bismarckian As is the case with many other modern states, Germany the strongest state on the continent. South Korea’s (hereafter referred to as Korea, On October 21, 1896, he urged king Kojong to except to differentiate South and North Korea) follow the example of the Russians, who officially defined “nation” and mainstream, strengthened themselves by introducing establishmentarian nationalism are inseparably conscription, by introducing it, together with connected to universal male conscription. modern schooling for both sexes, into Korea – While the institutional history of conscription in even though many other “Western customs” Korea is comparatively short – as explained could not be introduced.8 below, it was introduced by the Japanese colonial authorities in 1943 – its discursive Alarmed by the Russian advance into history is much longer. Conscription as the Manchuria in the wake of the Boxer Rebellion cornerstone of the military strength of the in 1900, Kojong soon decided to follow this continental European powers was repeatedly advice and had the General Staff (Wǒnsubu) mentioned in the publications of Korea’s draw up a draft of a conscription edict – only to earliest modern newspapers, Hansǒng Sunbo be thwarted in August 1901 by objections from (October 30, 1883 – August 21, 1884) and certain (unnamed) senior bureaucrats.9 On the Hansǒng Chubo (January 25, 1886 – July 14, urging of his closest advisers,10 Kojong 2 7 | 12 | 1 APJ | JF managed, however, to override the objections training” in the schools being considered the of conservatives, for whom the principle of second best choice in a situation where universality of modern conscription looked conscription was not possible. dangerously close to the “undesirable” idea of civic equality, and ultimately promulgated the After Japan’s full annexation of Korea in 1910, conscription edict on March 15, 1903. The the military and/or physical training of Korean edict represented a compromise of sorts, as youth remained one of the main concerns of An modern conscription was explained asCh’angho, now an exiled, mostly US-based “restoration” of a purported “ideal” Confucian nationalist activist. He founded the Young military system, in which “military affairs and Korea Academy (Hǔngsadan) in San Francisco agriculture were the same, and all four classes on May 13, 1913, basing it on the Spencerian of the subjects learned military skills” and the idea of the “harmonious development of “conscription rules of various countries” were intellect, morals, and body” which was widely referred to only in passing.11 However, the popular in Korea in the 1900s. Its edict was never realized in practice, due to “Constitution” (yakpǒp) lists training in military administrative shortcomings and chronic gymnastics or another sort of sports as a 15 financial deficits.12 The Korean state was condition for membership. On April 29, 1920, unable to render effective military resistance to An Ch’angho, then in Shanghai in connection Japanese troops, who occupied the country with the organization of the Korean Provisional without a single shot being fired at the start of Government (where he was appointed in the Russo-Japanese War in February 1904, succession as Minister of the Interior, Acting Korea’s relatively small professional army, Prime- Minister, and Labour Office Director), formally numbering around 16,000 officers and organized the Far Eastern Committee men, was gradually reduced in size under

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