– By Ian Golan
A young man in South Korea was just sentenced to two years in jail. His crime? Bad diet.
Korean draft authorities grew suspicious of a young man’s sudden weight gain just before his assessment. The draft dodger, wracked with guilt, confessed to deliberately packing on pounds to avoid conscription, implicating his friend who coached him on the rapid mass gain and masterminded the entire scheme. The accomplice was sentenced to six months in jail, while the future soldier was allowed to escape his prison sentence upon the condition that he serve his time in the army after all.
Conscription is back in fashion, at least in Europe. Sweden has reinstated mandatory military service, and Serbia is now eyeing a similar move as tensions on the continent rise. The shift has sparked serious debates on conscription in countries like Luxembourg, Germany, and even the UK. But the South Korean story perfectly illustrates just how absurd the process of conscription can be, and the myriad of unintended consequences it can bring along. Europe should take note. In public debate, conscription is lauded as a seamless solution to national defense, as if a few orders could magically craft a superior military. Europe, in its naive optimism fueled by decades of demilitarization, has forgotten the grim reality—the misery, the blunders, and the sheer toil that come with forcing men into uniform.
A key problem with conscription lies in the lack of self-selection. Whereas voluntary enlistment brings in only those truly fit and willing, conscription employs brute force to drag men, no matter how unwilling or unsuited into service. Conscription authorities often dismiss legitimate reasons for exemption such as illness, disability, or mental health issues as mere excuses or, in some cases, outright treason. Conversely, draft boards are littered with cases of men seeking exemption based on imaginary or overblown ailments. The true cases are lost in the forest of rampant fraudulence, and those with political connections or financial means are able to avoid service while those without are forced in despite valid reasons for exemption.
Conscription creates abhorrent incentives for the youth. Mild obesity runs rampant in conscript armies as the byproduct of forcing unwilling, unsuitable recruits into service. If a man is even somewhat overweight at eighteen, in all likelihood he will soon be unfit for duty, with bad habits only deepening over time.
Nonetheless, many armies waste precious resources on those unlikely to stay in reserve for long. The alternative is worse. Excluding recruits based on BMI would create a perverse incentive, as illustrated perfectly by the South Korean example. Just as potential draftees once used self-inflicted injuries to escape service, today a humble box of doughnuts becomes a free ticket out of army service. Conscription creates the complex art of draft-dodging. Men take up needless university degrees and even try to marry or have children all in the effort to soften the hearts of the draft board.
The most somber part of all of this is that the South Korean draft dodger is not likely to come out of the army any healthier. A central lie told by conscription advocates rests on the propagandistic image of the youth being forged into true men in the fire of military service. This is often fueled by typical intergenerational stereotyping. One will often hear from conscription’s defenders phrases like “Today’s youth are so fragile they need the army to teach them toughness.”
The marketing of conscription spins a tale of muscular youth leaving the army at the pinnacle of physical prowess, poised to win the hearts of every girl in sight or, in case of war, die nobly for their country. Yet the fitness results of mandatory service are far bleaker than the advertised fantasy. Men often see no change at all in their physical capabilities. A study on South Korean conscripts, aptly titled “Conscription Hurts,” showed soldiers suffered from poorer health for as long as a decade after they were discharged from military service.
Army diet is also a cause for concern, best showcased by the often-glorified example of conscription in Finland. Finnish conscripts show a significant increase in the consumption of sweet foods during their period of mandatory army service. While in the civilian world, well-informed men would avoid fat-heavy products, under the unimaginable stress of conscription, they completely let go.
In the grim world of military service, poor food choices are less about hunger and more about escapism—a brief, necessary relief from the stress and monotony of army life. In Finland, conscripts indulge in binge eating whenever they are granted leave, abandoning any concern for their health. For those already prone to overeating, military service offers the perfect storm of time and stress to cement bad habits, lasting long after they leave the army.
Conscription does not deliver the advertised effects. It results in the creation of perverse incentives, disrupting young people’s natural growth and development at the crucial point when they should be kick-starting their adult lives. The South Korean draft dodger frightened into army service will not leave it any fitter or particularly battle-ready but will certainly carry the scars of his attempted evasion. While many countries find themselves under external pressure from external threats, conscription is not the answer. The institution in question creates a fictitious sense of security. That is a delusion no nation can afford to indulge. Rather than seek an illiberal solution in the preservation of national security, nations should seek to create militaries that attract soldiers voluntarily, so as to create institutions that can actually be effective in the defense of their respective nations.