to enlist or not to enlist that is the latest heater debate here in south korea over mandatory
military service for members of k-pop sensation bts now in this segment of viewpoint we bring
you the thoughts of foreign journalists on this mata i have andres sanchez brown from efe spain
here in the studio andres it's good to have you back thanks for having us here sonny i also have
sebastian feletti from la filago sebastian welcome back thank you very much for your invitation
right and joining the session virtually is jotam confino journalist at hahitsand tv to
denmark joe tam it's a pleasure to have you with us my pleasure right andres let's begin with you
then your personal thoughts please on the debate ongoing debate that is with regard to mundane tree
military service for bts here in south korea well i mean for artists like bts to you know be forced
to put their career on hold for 18 to 21 months you know that's a lot of time without rehearsing
producing composing so you know it's totally understanding their concern and the fans concerned
and you know south korea is concerned given uh how important they are for the local economy uh but on
the other hand um i think there's also a uh you know a legitimate concern for uh people that are
not artists and uh you know are worried about uh you know what the broadening of these exemptions
might bring and like you know uh the problem with with them being deemed not important enough for
their contributions to society not important enough to be accepted from military service
i think this is probably the perfect moment for korea maybe to open the door uh and debate maybe
if if you know uh there's a discussion there's there's maybe this is the good time to privatize
to to professionalize sorry um the army right right and sebastian where do you stand on this
particular debate do you believe that members of bts should be exempt from compulsory conscription
given their um role in enhancing korea's cultural standing well of course as a foreign national i
have absolutely no right to give any any any uh advice on this very ha sensitive issue
but there's no question if we look back at we know that some other people in korea can be exempted
like some athletes some musical classic musicians so there's no question that that what bts brings
to south korea is on par with some of those athletes i mean bts has put korea on the map
they want so many charts so there's no question about that the question is more about fairness
of course korea is a country obsessed with ranking so it's easy when you have a gold
medal or when you have a clear set of rules to to say okay if you reach the gold medal you're
going to be exempted when it comes to artists it's a different story that's where there is
a debate but i think it's very important as andres said it's the right right time to have
a debate about this because this issue it might sound uh a bit of a light issue it's actually
touching upon very sensitive issue because we know our source chorus society is attached to
fairness we've seen in the past in past few years that sometime when someone got access
to some university uh for a reason that seems to be unfair it triggered massive political scandal
so this society needs furnace we'll look at this in in very uh um very in a very close way so it's
important in the discussion national assembly in society uh and say that is there a reason for
these people to be exempted despite their success we shouldn't be naive about this because the truth
is also these people are making huge amount of money what is at stake is actually millions or
billions of dollars for those young people so it's not just an issue about artists behind us
a monet vested interest so the question is also if they are exempted is there also a way for them to
contribute to society and if you examine them how do you make sure that there's no like um
free riding in the future uh so this is actually a very interesting discussion and it's worth being
on the political uh rather and and on the debate in this in this country right of course meanwhile
jotum you are danish israeli by bath and i believe your father was a veteran israeli soldier what are
your thoughts on this ongoing dispute over military service for bts here in south korea
i think i would agree with andres that as a foreigner i don't want to to go into the
debate really with my own personal opinion in this particular case it's the pop singers in
south korea i would say however that first of all debate is crucial in any democracy for any change
that's number one and number two i think each country in the world should have its own rules
because not all countries have military threats at their borders south korea is one of them
so obviously you should have different rules than let's say denmark because denmark isn't really in
a state of war with anyone denmark is also part of nato which means that it will be protected by
nato if someone attacks it and also it doesn't have a nuclear power a hostile nuclear power
right in its backyard so it makes complete sense that there are completely different rules for each
democracy in the world and i think that it's very healthy when south korea when you're debating this
that you have principles that you lay the foundation and debate upon is it
a money question is it a matter of of whether you contribute enough to the society what is actually
the starting point for the debate because i heard andres say something about yes they
bring in a lot of money which means that they pay a lot of taxes and in that way they make
the wheels go round in society and south korea that's a great point but the starting point should
really be which principle are we even discussing the military draft laws on right valid points of
course andres i believe conscription was abolished in spain back in the year 2001. can you tell us
a bit about the background behind the decision to rid off mandatory military service in spain after
230 years is it yes and actually you know spain and south korea share the fact that they were
back in the day both uh you know had military governments and uh mandatory military service was
something that all men had in common while they were growing up it was even uh you know a rite of
passage of sorts um but um i think actually jotum pointed something very interesting in that sense
with the turn in the century uh what had happened in spain was you know
the country had recovered democracy uh 23 years earlier it had joined nato it had joined the
european union so up until that point those last 23 years had meant basically peace and prosperity
for spain and we also have the fall of the eastern bloc so by the year 2001 basically spaniards saw
basically saw no enemies there was no talk uh like there used to be back in the day of you know
enemies of the homeland communists trying to invade and destroy your country
the enemy was gone so by the year 2001 we're talking about you know the days of the fukuyama's
end of history and basically the spanish people saw no need to keep mandatory service and uh um
and uh you know eventually it was abolished and uh we went for a professional army right so how
it still is and in france sebastian after almost two decades since phasing out conscription for men
the country's teenagers back in the year 2019 i believe to took part in a pilot program as part of
president emmanuel macron's pledge to reintroduce a form of civic service that would offer the young
a taste of military life what has been the response to that well absolutely that's been
one of the key promises of the can then candidate eminent macro in 2017 when he
first won the presidency and it was interesting because more than two decades after
france went for a professional military service professional army story and and cancelled the
military service that was back in 95 when after the collapse of the soviet union france felt that
there was no need for military service but we need the professional army to be able to project your
your troops far beyond europe so that was 20 years later macro is realizing the value also having a
military service what is this value he focus he says the need for young people for any class
any uh origin to get together at least for a short period of time to learn more about
the the so-called value of the french republic so what is at this stage uh this is a program
that is building up uh last year eighteen young french people between 15 and 17 like teenager
spend 10 days together but the idea is by 26 it will become a compulsory program where basically
for one month teenager will have to spend one month together and learn they have to wake up
early in the morning they have to salute the flag they have to learn about french republic values
and if they want to keep on they could potentially do a longer period of series in ngos or in public
services and they can also learn about defense if they want they can work in the police in the
in the military so this is basically not 10 but the ground the realization that that
military service add a value in terms of a cohesive value where you can glue the society
and that's really important the moment in france where there's increasing sense of inequality or
diversity within society there's also a lot of migrants in france people of uh uh foreign origin
and the idea of the military service like this is to bring all these people together so they can
still have something in common so it's remained to be seen whether they can keep it as planned
and make it compulsory that's the big question for the second minute of prison macro we just started
right and joe tom do shout with us a bit about the compulsory military service over that in israel
yeah so in israel everyone has to go to the army at the age of 18 men go for 32 months and
women go for 24 months and it has been like this since the establishment of the state really uh the
military is the backbone of the country and it has been like that from the beginning from 1948
because israel has been in a state of war with the surrounding state for decades they eventually made
peace with egypt and with jordan but at the moment they are still in a state of war with syria there
is hezbollah the terrorist organization considered a terrorist organization by most countries
in lebanon that is a direct threat to israel you have hamas and islamic jihad ii palestinian also
considered terrorist organizations in gaza that are from time to time firing rockets at israel
and you have many other countries such as iran iraq that are very hostile towards israel so
it is the backbone here which is why everyone has to go to the army that being said there
is a lot of debate also about the exemptions in israel because there's always an exemption to a
rule of course and in this case it's religious uh jews orthodox jews they get to uh basically
not go to the army if they don't want to and they are in hundreds of thousands here at this point
uh they weren't in the beginning of the state of israel when it was established but today hundreds
of thousands of orthodox shoes get to or go free from the army and this is um basically a law that
was passed by the israeli government decades ago to give some sort of our freeway some exception
to this particular segment in society today it is widely discussed and and a lot of people are angry
about it why aren't they going to the army why do they get to to not go for 32 months into the army
so it's a huge debate um a little bit like the one you have in south korea only it's not pop
bands but religious people that are the ones being accepted so a huge debate going on here in israel
right and andres in recent days russia's invasion of ukraine has renewed interest in
national defense capabilities that being said what are the chances of spain perhaps reinstating a
form of military service uh for men in the future well as of now i think that's highly unlikely but
you know the ukraine war could take um any turn uh we never know um but of course that said
you know countries like spain or portugal or even france you know we stand at the western side
of europe and uh in that sense we feel that the the you know the threat to our
territorial integrity is not as compromised as other countries in the east which actually have
uh kept their military services like i can think of greece uh ukraine actually uh recovered the
mandatory military service after um you know the the invasion of the donbas area in 2014
um but what can actually also happen is what has happened in countries like sweden uh which
actually um had to restart the mandatory military service because they were actually running out of
professional soldiers they're the the armed forces for found no way to engage people um
into the military and uh you know they had to they had to reinstate the mandatory military service
is that a problem happening now in spain i i don't believe so right now the troops are numbering
around 80 000 and the government that deems that that is necessary as as far as it goes to
defending uh the national territory but as you said uh there's a war going out in ukraine and you
never know what could happen in the next few years right we don't sebastian let's go back to the
debate on bts then what alternative service do you suppose could members of bts engage in instead of
the military then well i think there's also some you know creative way where you can find a we can
find a middle ground here because people are talking here about either exemption or going
to the fully fledged military service but if we look in the past in other countries there's a
lot of pop stars who were enrolled in the military service in other countries even back in the us you
had elvis presley who went he had to do his duty in france also we had some famous pop star we had
to do military series but you know what happened it was a great pr operation for the military
you bring them on but you gave them they don't necessarily do the hard work but they show up
to see the troops the cheer up the the people i mean there are also ways where you could have a
ban like bts contributing without necessarily doing the um the the service that other
koreans do i mean it's open the other alternative is to do some uh some work for the community
through ngos or through some some public services i think there's ways where you
could find a compromise so you they will show that they are doing something for society
uh without necessarily putting on all their career so the question is also whether the
society here in south korea is ready to accept this kind of uh creative solution or whether
we're gonna stick to one size fits for all approach where basically there's no exam there's
no uh flexibility right it's an ongoing debate so we'll have to wait and see probably all right
sebastian thank you very much for your thoughts andres thank you for your thoughts and your time
and enjoy time over in israel thank you very much for joining us live at this r my pleasure