South Korean army investigators send the corpses of two army soldiers, who were found dead together in apparent suicides at an apartment in southern Seoul on August 12, to a military hospital. Photo: IC

 A 22-year-old South Korean solider, Yoon Seung-joo, was murdered at the end of 35 days of brutal violence. Private First Class Yoon was beaten, deprived of sleep, forced to eat toothpaste and lick salvia off the floor, and also sexually assaulted, after which he fell into a coma. The truly terrifying part of his death? His assailants were six senior soldiers in the medical unit Yoon was sharing a barracks with.

Deadly service

"Something you shouldn't do even to an enemy or to anyone at all happened," 50-year-old Jung Mi-sook, mother of a 21-year-old son who will begin his mandatory military service this winter, told the Global Times. 

News of Yoon's death emerged earlier in August in an expose published by a military rights group more than three months after the South Korean army had said Yoon choked to death while eating in early April.

Much to the military's embarrassment, Yoon's death, for which the army has been criticized for attempting to whitewash, came only one month after a sergeant surnamed Lim went on a shooting spree in a frontline army unit, killing five soldiers and injuring seven others on June 21.

Sergeant Lim, who was only three months shy of discharge, was reportedly bullied by his fellow soldiers and even exempted from the order of command, meaning his juniors could ignore him.

"People say if you endure, you become Private Yoon; if you explode, you become Sergeant Lim," Jung said. "Do I want to send my son to the army knowing this? Of course not."

With their country technically still at war with North Korea, all South Korean young men between the ages of 18 to 35 are subject to conscription, joining the country's 630,000-strong armed forces for more than 20 months with a monthly salary between 112,500 won ($110) and 149,000 won.

"The problem of harsh treatment in the military is pervasive. The [Yoon and Lim] cases just brought those issues to the surface," Kim Jung-gil, a 28-year-old office worker who served in the army between 2006 and 2008, told the Global Times.

The controversy generated by the recent tragedies led to rallies, both online and offline, urging the military to overhaul its violent culture, and has caused some to doubt conscription.

"I used to always condemn draft-dodgers but now I understand them," a 26-year-old female graduate student who wished to remain anonymous told the Global Times.

In order to appease the public backlash, the army recently unveiled 20 steps it would take to improve its culture, including rewarding whistleblowers, strengthening standards for recruiting and early discharge for unfit soldiers.

But Kim remains skeptical about the military's plans.

"I've also heard of, seen and even experienced verbal and physical abuses" in the middle of a military campaign against harsh treatment, Kim said, adding "Whistle-blowing is almost impossible there."

Similar or new measures to curb violence and suicides were taken by the army following high-profile tragedies in 2000, 2005, 2011 and 2012.

Crying out for attention

Following a 2005 shooting rampage that saw a soldier take the life of eight comrades, the army implemented a system meant to identify soldiers in need of special attention. The scheme is supposed to manage soldiers more efficiently and allow higher-ups to pay closer attention to soldiers in need. 

But a spate of recent incidents, including several suicides, have revealed the military's neglect in managing the scheme and raised doubts on its effectiveness.

On August 11, two soldiers hanged themselves together in one of their apartments during their vacation, and another shot himself to death next day. All three were categorized as soldiers in need of special attention. Two were designated "Class A [in need of high-level attention]," the designation given to those who likely to cause accidents or attempt suicide. Soldiers receiving this designation are not allowed to work on front lines.

The two soldiers, who reportedly had difficult time adjusting to military life, warned that they were considering suicide before they killed themselves, but the warnings were lost among reports to senior commanders.

From 2004 to 2008, an average of 72.6 soldiers killed themselves every year, while from 2009 to 2013, the number rose to 82.2 a year, according to data from the Ministry of National Defense (MND). In 2013, among 117 soldiers who died on active duty, 79 were due to suicide.

The system, which is supposed to help identify soldiers in need of help, has led to some being branded as troublemakers, while critics have said that its standards are discriminatory.

Kang Dong-won, a member of the New Politic Alliance for Democracy opposition party, said on August 17 that the standards for categorizing soldiers are a human rights violation, and discriminate against the underprivileged, citing the category B (mid-level attention), given to soldiers from single parent families, who are beneficiaries of national basic livelihood assistance, or who have sex-related violations on their records. 

It is estimated that about 8,998 servicemen, or 9.4 percent of the total force, fall into category A. Including those soldiers designated B or C, 21.8 percent of South Korean troops are in need of special attention, said one lawmaker last week.

The military, meanwhile, has made 250 barracks life consultants available, a figure equivalent to one consultant for every 2,400 conscripts at 2014 force levels.

For the military, the need to lower the number of soldiers in need of attention is growing, but experts say strengthening recruiting standards might be difficult in short term unless politicians, who often pledge a shorter military service term, are willing to roll back a three-month reduction in military service terms introduced in 2011. 

South Korea's military is already under pressure from decreasing numbers of young men due to the country's low birth rate and shortened duty term. In 2013, the military drafted 91 percent of conscript candidates for active duty, compared with only 51 percent in 1986.