I am now used to hear the question after I say that I am from Korea. “Have you done the military service?” Considering the long, tragic history of the divided country, I guess that might be a natural response of everyone. Yes, the military has became one of the cores that compose this country.
A law student named Eui-Seok Kang has headlined Korean media these days. He did a performance to stop the marching tanks celebrating the Day of Korean Military. He, completely naked, jumped into the middle of the marching parade of tanks. He urges that we do not need any military force but peace. He is saying that “there cannot be any war in this world if everyone chooses not to serve in any military.” He also admits that his idea is Utopian, but he addes that a change always follows the ideal.
I cannot argue against his statement of our responsibility to create positive changes in society to make the idea into reality. However, I have to question before I can say that I completely agree to his idea. Will there be, really, no war after all, if all of us chooses not to have military?
I guess I am not smart as he is, so I cannot see the simple logic he suggests. Let me ask a question, though may seem irrelevant: why do we need law? If all of us are so smart to choose peace rather than destructive battle that will eventually kill ourselves, aren’t we smart enough to avoid conflicts and cooperate with everyone in the society? If then, aren’t we intelligent enough to follow ethics, the justice we crave for, and eventually to the ideal?
Let us see what is going on in this society. We are creating another law everyday just to protect us (and possibly to manipulate others); this is happening not because there is no ethics or justice. I speak of the ethics, you long for the justice, and we are all taking a step toward the ideal. We need law because we cannot trust each other. A person, innately full of desires to take the best, “might” violate others’ act to fulfill such desires as well. I should not define a human being as selfish or innately evil, but I am at least sure that most of us would agree to the statement that a human being always extracts, or attempts to do so, the best out of its surroundings. We need a physical restraint to keep every members of the society in control. We voluntarily gave up our freedom to insure our safety. The freedom is the cost we pay.
Kang stressed that 51% of the annual budget of the United States is spent for military. With the statistics, he wrote that we can feed a half million starving children three meals a day. Sadly enough, that is the cost we chose to pay to insure our ‘own’ safety. Countless bodies fall everyday, and the dollars flow into the fatty belly of weapon merchants and politicians. We all do know the fact, but we chose to pay the cost. We are just people; we care more of ourselves, our family, our friends, or our relatives. Maybe a million people would starve to die somewhere thousands miles away; we know it is not just, but we would still choose to save a thousand people right here than the million out there. That’s just human nature.
Yes, it would be a far-better world if all of us choose to throw weapons away and take a step together. But what if I disarmed, but the guy living next door hid a knife? What if our country disbanded its military, but the country out there kept a missile? This endless roop of ‘what if’ questions, the perpetual suspect, is the reason why we still have war, weapons, the military, and everything negative but unavoidable. I wish we could trust each other, being naked but not afraid to greet each other with kiss. Unfortunately, we chose to pay the cost.
