CHUNCHEON, Feb. 23 (Korea Bizwire) – The Ministry of National Defense’s recent announcement that it will lift restrictions on the movements of South Korean soldiers granted short term passes as well as abolish a rule requiring non-commissioned officer recruits to live on base for a designated period is causing a stir in communities near the [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 13 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s military said Tuesday it will abolish or scale down hundreds of routine, non-combat activities as part of a reform drive. The country’s 625,000-strong armed forces have organized or supported 953 ceremonies, festivals and other events nationwide every year that are not directly related to combat readiness, while [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 2 (Korea Bizwire) — Hundreds of South Korean troops will be deployed to Thailand this month for an annual international exercise, the Navy here said Friday. A combat unit of more than 430 sailors and Marines will leave for the Southeast Asian nation later in the day to join the Cobra Gold drills [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 19 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s military will reduce the number of troops to half a million by 2022 as part of a new round of defense reform, the Ministry of National Defense said Friday. The mandatory service period of rank-and-file soldiers will be shortened to 18 months in stages from the current [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 1 (Korea Bizwire) — The National Assembly on Friday passed a set of motions to extend the deployment of South Korean troops in Lebanon, South Sudan, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and off the coast of Somali by a year each. Two of the motions call for extending the terms of the troops’ [...]
SEOUL, Sept. 13 (Korea Bizwire) — An Army soldier, who was wounded in a firing accident involving a K-9 self-propelled howitzer in Gangwon Province last month, died in a hospital on Wednesday, the Army said. The death of Wie Dong-min, a 20-year-old sergeant, raised the number of victims to three in an explosion of a [...]
SEOUL, April 25 (Korea Bizwire) – The controversial coin-operated washing machines in the South Korean military that charge soldiers 1,000 won ($0.90) per load of laundry became one of the key talking points during the third presidential TV debate, which aired on KBS last Sunday. As the South Korean military failed to install enough washing machines [...]