South Korea Must Offer Alternatives to Military Draft, Court Rules

SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea’s Constitutional Court on Thursday ordered the government to introduce civilian forms of service for conscientious objectors, sparing hundreds of young men from going to prison each year for refusing to serve in the military for reasons of conscience or religious beliefs.

In a landmark decision, the court ruled that Article 5 of the country’s Military Service Act is unconstitutional because it does not offer such alternative services. It gave the government and Parliament until the end of next year to revise the law.

South Korea has prosecuted more young men for conscientious objection — almost all of them Jehovah’s Witnesses — than any other country, and it is one of the few that treat it as a crime without offering a different form of national service. Amnesty International says more than 19,300 South Korean conscientious objectors have gone to prison since 1953, when the Korean War ended in a truce.

“The state can no longer delay resolving this problem,” the court said in its 6-3 ruling, which held that Article 5 violated conscientious objectors’ freedom of conscience.

The Defense Ministry said Thursday that it would honor the ruling by introducing alternative services as soon as possible. Possible forms of service that have been suggested include working in homeless shelters, prisons and hospitals, or as police officers or firefighters.

All South Korean men who pass physical and mental eligibility tests are required to spend 21 to 24 months in the military between the ages of 18 and 28. The Military Service Act calls for up to three years in prison for those who refuse to serve.

Some 214 Jehovah’s Witnesses are serving 18-month prison sentences for violating the law, and more than 950 others are on trial. All were expected to be freed.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses in South Korea called the decision the beginning of an end to the “long and harsh pain” felt by its young, male members and their families.

”I am happy that I finally got a ruling that respects my freedom of conscience,” said Kim Keun-hyeong, 25, a Jehovah’s Witness who was one of the 28 conscientious objectors whose petitions led to the court’s ruling.

South Korea’s border with North Korea is the most heavily armed frontier in the world, and the two countries are technically still at war, though a peace treaty to formally end the Korean War has been proposed amid this year’s flurry of diplomacy over the North’s nuclear arms program. North Korean men typically serve in the country’s military for a decade.

During the decades after the Korean War, when the South was ruled by military dictators, government officials raided Jehovah’s Witnesses’ meeting halls to haul draft-age men away. When they refused to take up arms, they were beaten “like punching bags,” according to a presidential commission’s report in 2008.

Few spoke out for them. Mainstream churches viewed them as a cult, and the threat from North Korea led many South Koreans to regard military service almost as a sacred rite.

The commission attributed the deaths of five Jehovah’s Witnesses between 1975 and 1985 to beatings and torture that were “routine” among boot camp instructors and military police officers who dealt with conscientious objectors. It reported incidents of starvation, water torture and solitary cells smaller than a telephone booth where Jehovah’s Witnesses were forced to stand for days without sleeping.

Such practices are long gone. But Jehovah’s Witnesses and other conscientious objectors who have spent time in prison say their job opportunities have been seriously limited.

”I refuse to pick up a rifle. I renounce all forms of violence,” said Hong Jeong-hun, a conscientious objector who is not a Jehovah’s Witness, and who was also among the petitioners heard by the court. “Today’s ruling was a strong message against punishing those who risk going to prison in order to protect peace from violence.”

A handful of South Korean conscientious objectors have obtained refugee status in Canada, France and Australia in recent years. The United Nations Human Rights Committee has repeatedly condemned South Korea for violating conscientious objectors’ “freedom of thought, conscience and religion.”

The Constitutional Court ruled the Military Service Act constitutional in 2004 and again in 2011, saying that the constitutional right to freedom of conscience did not overrule the need for national defense.

But the country’s attitudes have been changing. As a candidate last year, President Moon Jae-in promised to consider introducing alternative service for conscientious objectors. Since 2011, lower-court judges have declared 85 conscientious objectors not guilty, though all of the acquittals were appealed by prosecutors.

Many still argue that conscientious objectors must be punished for the sake of national security, and that the option of alternative civilian service will lead many young men to evade the draft under the pretext of ethical principles.

“Why don’t you just leave the country if you don’t want to serve in the military!” shouted a few protesters in front of the court on Thursday.

The court said in its ruling that if conscientious objectors are carefully screened, their numbers will never be big enough to cause difficulties in filling the ranks of the military. It also said that evading conscription would remain a crime.

The court did not say how much time conscientious objectors should spend in civilian service. Kim Young-kil, a retired army colonel who leads the Just Military Human Rights Institute, a civic group that has been campaigning for the punishment of draft dodgers, said that alternative service should be long and rigorous enough to ensure that it is a fair substitute for serving in the military.

Regardless, the ruling was a hard-won victory for Jehovah’s Witnesses. “Because of our faith, we have been treated like criminals,” said Kim Min-hwan, a member of the faith who served in prison from 2012 to 2013. “I am overwhelmed that with this ruling, an era is coming to a close.”