Trouble with Conscription, Entertaining Soldiers

Gender and military studies focus on Western postconscription societies, overlooking the significance of military service to gender order in the larger society. Concerned with the military’s changing form in industrial and democratic society, military sociology literature argues for the broad trend toward the decline of the conscription-based military and highlights not only economic factors but also geopolitical factors influencing this trend. Yet this literature overlooks the significance of gender in interpreting such geopolitical factors. Focusing on the problem of equity in conscription in contemporary South Korea and on one popular cultural response to that problem, this article examines the importance of men’s conscription to the organization of meanings and practices of masculinity (and femininity) in larger society and argues that the geopolitical reality in Korea that justifies militarized national security and the existence of conscription is embedded in the gendered interpretation of what is being threatened and to be protected.