Noh Hyung-wook, the chief of the Office for Government Policy Coordination, spoke about the recent argument that K-Pop stars must be exempt from mandatory military service. He said, "We must comprehensively consider the situation in light of contemporary context."
Noh stated at the audit meeting of the National Assembly's political affairs committee on October 18th that "there is no choice but to examine the application of military service exceptions to popular K-pop stars." "We need to look at how to reshape the system in terms of culture, sports, Japanese economic policy, industry exceptions and etc."
The chief of the policy coordinating office emphasized that "It requires scrutiny on the divisions of Art whether to apply only to Fine Art or to reflect Contextualized areas."
Prior to this, Kim Byung-wook, a Democratic Party lawmaker, said, "The military service system should be changed according to the situation of contemporary era." He noted that recently, BTS ranked the first two or three times on the billboard chart and the economic value they created was over 5.6 trillion won ($ 5.6 billions).
The politician Kim addressed, "Everyone agrees that BTS or the emerging idols are contributing on national economy and fame." The lawmaker added, "Kimchi or Bulgogi boosted Korean fame in the past. Now, K-Pop's role is much greater." He argued that the standard of Military Service exemption should be extended to apply to K-pop stars.
He also said, "There are also many petitions submitted to the Blue House public board to extend military service exemption cases to popular culture and K-pop."
According to the current military service law, sports athletes are automatically assigned as arts and sports agents who can be exempt from the mandatory military service if they become the first or third place in Asian Games or gain Olympic gold medals. Artists will benefit if they rank first or second in international competitions designated by the government or first in national competitions such as national music contest.
The current system has been criticized as it applies only to fine artists in the arts field, which does not fit the current situation, and it has been pointed out that it excludes popular music workers such as BTS and other K-Pop stars.
