Another military story.
See, in Korea, every male citizen has to do the complusory military service. It's two years long, and you live on the base, almost completely separated from the outside world. And this is what happens when you do that to 20-year old men.
As I haven't been in the military yet, I don't have a complete grasp of what this is all about - I'll find out pretty soon. I can see it's a kind of physical punishment, but I don't really understand what this does to the military morale and stuff. Or maybe, many days of separation from girls can homosexualize guys.
I've heard so much bad stuff about the military here, from my father, friends, uncles, cousins, etc. You walk 80 miles a night, they beat the hell out of you, you do anything they tell you to do, blah blah blah. As a flat-footer, walking that long distance kind of worried me, but I wasn't really scared of those things. But these photoes do terribly scare me. Gosh, I don't wanna be the subject of sexual pleasure for guys.
Or maybe it's just that all the stuff I've heard about the military wasn't substantiated enough for me to take it seriously. But then, with the help of digital technologies and Internet, I'm actually seeing it. And now I have to take it serisouly, hoping the revealing of these ugly truths would help make things better. Internet is a cursed blessing, really.
I guess it was about a week or two ago. A Korean soldier, known as Private Kim, allegedly opened fire and threw hand grenades at his collegues sleeping inside the barrack. The incident left eight killed and two wounded.
Then, the military's own investigation team said Kim's motive was to retaliate on verbal abuses he received from his seniors. They went on to accuse Kim of premeditating the shooting. According to the military, Kim was a videogame freak, oh well. So now we have a brutal murdurer who mercilessly killed his friends over some unkind words.
Now the whole media make him such, and the whole nation has turned against him. He's the one to blame, because the crazy m.f went on a shooting spree just because he couldn't put up with some bad-mouthing, part of daily military lives that everyone else takes for granted and has no trouble with. Seriously, the military did such a great job at pointing fingers at Kim that the whole nation just believes he's the bad guy. Mad props to the military for holding that press conference with the survivors attending, who were sobing and weeping all the way through what looked rather like a well-orchestrated show.
The problem is we've never heard a word from Kim about why he did it. It was the military that told us what he said. In fact, we've never even seen his face. Well, maybe what the military told the public indeed came out of Kim's mouth, but who knows what they did to make Kim say what they wanted him to say. Who knows how much was manupulated and fabricated? Better yet, technically, he's not exactly convicted yet, but does he even have a lawyer? With one military body doing all the investigation, it looks like the case has been all wrapped up nicely and everyone's happy. Yeah, the military found an easy and quick way out - blame one individual for all, rather than looking into problems of the entire system that actually might have driven Kim to do that. As long as everyone's happy with that, who cares? The military knows that well, because they've been doing that years after years.
Time would go on, and people will forget about what happened. Kim will live rest of his life locked up in prison, and people will stop talking about him. Wanna know the truth? Get over it. And move on, just like everyone else.
