Military’s Poor Meal

Hajon Lee

Recently, there has been numerous reports on the anonymous military community page on facebook reporting the poor conditions of meal soldiers were treated with. It first started with the controversy of quarantine soldiers who were given less than other soldiers. However it seemed like it wasn’t only for the quarantine soldiers, but for normal soldiers also. They didn’;t even have enough portion for all of them so had to ration the food. Also, soldiers were served less of the main menu every time. The news spread fast as more and more soldiers took their outcry online posting the meals they received. This controversy has happened in the past, but no major changes have been made. Similarly, since the distribution incident broke out the officials have been more strict on checking the soldiers’ phones and told them it would be more harder for them if they continued to report the situation. There has also been another controversy as a soldier was served a 1000won cake for his birthday when the army is supposed to give 15,000 won worth of cake to soldiers who have birthdays every month. What has really angered the soldiers and citizens is not that they couldn’t eat a delicious cake however the people’s tax, or which should be spent on these soldiers are not being properly spent. The National Human Rights Commission said that it will conduct a “2021 military human rights situation survey” on military training centers, 20 divisions of boot camp, navy, air force, and marine boot camp. Officials related to the issue have gathered and have decided to raise the basic daily meal cost of soldiers from 8,790 won this year to 10,500 won next year. In addition, the Ministry of National Defense said it is also considering increasing brunch (combined breakfast and lunch) such as sandwiches that suit the taste of new generation soldiers from once a month to once a week. In the case of breakfast with relatively low feeding rates for soldiers, a “simple buffet” breakfast will be introduced on a trial basis, which will be served with cereal, toast, coffee, fruit, and rice, simple soup, and kimchi. It will be necessary to see if the changes will actually be made.