18,755 Draftees Exempted Due to Administrative Loophole

It was revealed on Tuesday that, among those classified as public service personnel, an annual average of 3,750 people or a total of 18,755 people have been exempted from military service under the incumbent administration because they stayed on the waiting list for too long due to a number of reasons such as administrative mistakes.

Some of them were, however, identified to have dodged the draft by registering their addresses falsely in areas where the demand for public service personnel is low.

Since 2001, the Military Manpower Administration (MMA) has been exempting people who have not been summoned for more than four years after being classified in non-active service in an attempt to eliminate difficulties in entering the workforce for those who have not fulfilled their military duties but have been on the waiting list for a long time.

According to a report that the MMA submitted to Grand National Party lawmaker Maeng Hyeong-gyu, a total of 18,755 – 5,957 in 2003, 5,328 in 2004, 1,089 in 2005, 3,588 in 2006, and 2,793 in 2007 (as of the end of July) - have been exempted from military duties because they were not called up for duty after being classified in non-active service.

A total of 135,113 people were classified as non-active military duty personnel in draft physicals during a similar period: 39,610 in 2002, 36,996 in 2003, 20,260 in 2004, 19,416 in 2005 and 18,831 in 2006. Among the 135,113 potential recruits, 13.9 percent were exempted from duty over the five year period.

In particular, a total of 547 people were exempted from military service in 2005 among those classified as non-active military duty personnel in Incheon and Gyeonggi Province only. Although the local governments in the corresponding regions requested 7,542 new public service personnel, the MMA assigned only 4,418 service personnel, down 20 percent from 2004.

The MMA is obliged to confirm the actual residential addresses of draftees when they are to be exempted from duty due to postponement. However, the administration has been checking their residences by mail as a mere formality, exposing their blind spot in the military conscription system.

The Board of Audit and Inspection (BAI) found that a man, identified as A, falsified his residential address in a rural town with few administrative offices, though he resided in an urban area in South Jeolla Province. In this regard, the BAI decided to take disciplinary action against the administrative officers of the Gwangju-South Jeolla Province MMA.

Some say that the system has been exploited as a new way to evade military service by brokers.

“We urgently need to draw up supplementary measures to prevent people from exploiting the loophole in the system,” Maeng said.

“Not only the demand for public service personnel differs in each region but also the number of draftees on the waiting list differs in each local MMA office, inevitably making people exempted from military duties due to delay. In order to fix the problems, the MMA has included the draftees, who have not been summoned for a long time, in the early draft list,” an official of the MMA said.

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