hankyoreh

A woman puts up signs and flowers on the gate of the Ministry of National Defense in Seoul on June 10 to commemorate the Air Force master sergeant who died by suicide in June after being sexually assaulted. (Lee Jong-keun/The Hankyoreh)

In a research report early this year, the RAND Corporation in the US shared a shocking statistic: 16,000 soldiers leave the military early each year due to sexual assault and harassment.

Amid ongoing improvements through independent reforms since 2010, sexual assault incidents stabilized at their lowest level by 2016. But around 2018, the situation started reversing.

Around 13,000 sexual assaults against female soldiers were reported that year, an increase of 44% from the year before. If male victims are also counted, the number reaches 20,000.

Strange, isn’t it? Why should sex-related incidents have increased so dramatically in that one particular time frame around 2018? It may have had something to do with the #MeToo movement, which had been gaining momentum since 2017.

With sexual assault cases in the military continuing unabated, US President Joe Biden moved this February to order an independent review committee to diagnose the issue and find solutions.

The committee found that while there was still a high frequency of sexual assault cases in the US armed forces, only around one in four victims actually reported the assault. This means that most of the victims either shoulder the burden as they carry on with their military careers — unable to even report their victimization — or else they opt to leave the military behind.

Concluding that the US armed forces had failed to protect its sons and daughter, the report shared 80 or so recommendations for stronger responsibility and legal measures with US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.

The #MeToo movement in the US has had a tremendous impact on South Korea. But our military never dreamed that the shock waves would extend to South Korea’s armed forces.

In the wave of recent cases involving the tragic deaths of female noncommissioned officers, the South Korean military has finally realized that sexual assault is no longer “other people’s problem.”

These days, even the sound of a text coming in on their phones is enough to make senior officials in the Ministry of National Defense feel queasy. They’re afraid they might see an announcement about yet another incident in the armed forces blowing up.

South Korea’s military has yet to think about the root causes of these incidents. They haven’t found any ways of preventing future ones either, leaving them feeling even more at a loss with each new one.

A closer look at the recent tragic deaths involving female officers — one in the Air Force and another in the Navy — makes it seem even more apparent that the real factor behind them was the “secondary assault”: the ongoing pressure and cajoling that sexual assault victims in the military face.

What lesson do these incidents teach to junior officers? Silence and resignation, it seems — the fear that if they report what happened to them, a similar tragedy could await.

The military is an insular organization, where it is difficult to keep victims and perpetrators separate forever. It’s also accustomed to a code of loyalty meant to protect that organization.

Victims who wish to continue in a military career have to put up with seeing their victimizers walking around with impunity, all the other unit members look the other way. At that point, the victims sense that the organization is not looking out for them.

Those who do report assaults are stigmatized by other unit members and could even face obstacles to a future where their advancement is based on evaluation reports by their commanding officer. We even see perverse cases in which victims plead with their military counselors not to let word get out about their victimization.

What does it tell us when the time of one of the female officers’ deaths came quite a while after the assault, and a few months after she reported it? She summoned the courage to refuse to remain silent, yet she was not protected.

The organization that compelled her to stay silent bears responsibility for her death. That is the South Korean military.

Under the circumstances, quite a few junior officers would choose instead to quietly avoid ruffling feathers or to exit the armed forces entirely. But when this kind of silence keeps being forced on people, there comes a tipping point.

That’s the moment when conflict erupts. Commanding officers are at their wit’s end trying to keep the situation in hand. The media lay into the Ministry of National Defense without mercy.

Today, the ministry is reeling from a left and right hook combination. It’s painful to see how helpless they seem to find any solution or figure out where to even start.

It’s also raising the alarm in terms of trust not just outside the armed forces, but within them as well. If it ignores the signs, the South Korean military could face an even bigger crisis than the one US military is facing right now.

The deaths of those two female officers are a warning sign of the sort of catastrophe that could be in store.

By Kim Jong-dae, visiting scholar at Yonsei Institute for North Korean Studies

Please direct comments or questions to [english@hani.co.kr]