“You say you are a concientious objector but how do you explain all the violence you commit in this video game?”
It’s not good enough to simply say you’re a conscientious objector, otherwise everyone and their brother would do it and conscription as a concept would fail.
So, if you are one, you gotta fucking prove that shit somehow. Words aren’t good enough. Go protest, join an org, donate to charities, whatever. Need some evidence though.
It’s not complicated to understand.
“I value human life and video games aren’t real”
It isn’t hard
Not evidence though
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No mate.
Testimony of what you witnessed, did first hand or was told first hand is evidence.
‘I value human life over video games’ is a statement or opinion on your thoughts/intent.
That is not evidence.
There’s more to it than the clickbait headline.
and conscription as a concept would fail.
Oh the horror!
Usually I’d agree with you, but S Korea is in an unusual situation where they would actually get overrun without their army. They’re still technically at war, and N Korea does plenty of sabre rattling.
That’s not a place like the US, where the military is mainly used for overseas adventures, they face real, external threats.
While I agree with that, I don’t agree that playing violent video games is proof that you’re not opposed to violence in real conflict.
Agreed, it is not. I think that is more the misleading, clickbaity headline than the argument the courts made though, which is in the article itself.
Saying it is good enough. It’s not unreasonable to think a regular person might be against human rights abuses. You can’t demand that citizens go support your imperialist regime just because they only indirectly show support for human life.
Not good enough for a court, they have to examine more than merely the defendants words.
It is pretty safe to assume that people who claim they value human life are not lying about it. Why isn’t valuing human life accepted by the courts? That’s a fucked up society is what it is.
Because simply saying something is never good enough. People just say shit all the time, where a court has a responsibility to actually try to find the truth.
Think about a murder case. Should you release everyone that simply says they didn’t do it, or should the court look for more evidence of their innocence?
It’s a messy process because it has to be. Historically, we used to use even sillier methods, like trial by combat and such. Just your words alone has never really been good enough though, because people can just say stuff.
Even when the things they’re saying “sound” reasonable, that’s still not good enough.
Murder and being against human suffering are 2 wildly different things. I have absolutely no problem taking people at their word on matters of base humanity. Not so for murder. You can tell they’re different because one is a felony. If somebody happens to lie about being a decent person to get out of the military, great, more power to em. Whatever they do instead will be far more useful than fighting some pointless war.
The reason their word is good enough is that they’re not denying a crime, they’re claiming a positive. If everyone started claiming they’re a pacifist, things would get better, not worse.
I’m not trying to debate the values, just explain the law. But no, if everyone claimed to be a pacifist, I do not think that would improve things. Everyone would have to actually want to be one too. Conscription evasion is a crime there though, very clearly, wouldn’t you say?
There are better ways to get soldiers than forced conscription.
Like in Pakistan, they run 24/7 nationalist propaganda about how amazing the military is and how brave men have sacrificed their lives for
General Bajwa’s 300 papa john’s locationsthe freedom of the nation.Or in the USA, they run a 24/7 marketing campaign advertising minimmum wages and education in exchange for “chilling” 6 years in the infantry with no post service trauma or health issues whatsoever.
LOL this reads like a reverse Sovereign Citizen.
Exactly. Where a sov cit thinks they can just say things and make them true, the actual law is a lot more complicated than that. It’s the polar opposite.
This seems incredibly stupid on its face. Someone please give me context that makes it make sense.
So, as far as I can see the ruling was that the guy hadn’t sufficiently proved through his actions (e.g. protesting, joining any anti-war movements or in this case even expressing this view to anyone beforehand) that he was an actual conscientious objector and not just a chancer who didn’t want to serve.
The fact that he played PUBG was brought up as part of the suggestion that he was just having a go but wasn’t the whole case against him. Indeed tbh I can’t really see anything suggesting it was a particularly important consideration compared to the lack of positive evidence of conscientious objection but obviously it’s the bit that’s going to get clicks.
Can’t hold a moral stance without shouting it at everyone around you!
If you don’t join such groups, do you really believe it strong enough?
Kinda feels like that only holds when you hold a minority opinion (from a larger societal view). There are no big, explicit groups for being anti-random murder or government-mandated molestations. Most of us are just sorta passively against certain things.
If we want governments to respect people’s sincere beliefs, religions, and culture then they need some system to determine them. It may not be perfect but if someone is claiming to be a dedicated pacifist but has never expressed that except to get out of service it’s a little suspicious.
Edit: I removed a stupid joke about pacifist video games because that’s not at all the point
I’m a pacifist and my favorite game is dark souls 2. This is because I am aware of the difference between games and reality.
While I do enjoy dark souls 2, and I don’t think it deserves a lot of the hate it gets, I am surprised to see someone call it their favorite while the other 2 exist. What do you like about 2 more than 1 and 3?
I haven’t played 3, but I say 2 over 1 because it actually fucking works. You can’t get randomly trapped in way too powerful zones, corpses disapper so you don’t trip on them, you can’t get cursed so badly you have to backtrack the entire known world, etc. Also, whoever designed Blighttown took the “bug infested swamp” theme WAY too literally.
The interlocking map is certainly “cool”, but as far as gameplay is concerned, it’s pretty much the worst way to lay out a world, because you can’t easily get from one place to another, and it will very quickly confuse everybody. There’s one level, new londo ruins, that you can’t attempt without using a pretty rare consumable each time, and when I was attempting it, firelink shrine was extinguished, meaning I had to run for like 5 minutes before each attempt on top of the consumable problem.
Hbomberguy has a great video about it, you should definitely check it out if you are interested in the games, he obviously puts it much better than I can
I know pacifists, and they generally don’t spend their free time playing violent games.
As a pacifist, I play the SHIT out of some violent video games because guess what? I know the difference between interactive fiction and reality. Shooting supermutants, throwing goblins at trolls and mowing down mantisaurs on a moon called Monarch is FUN. Real humans killing real humans isn’t.
That you think your childish notion of pacifist absolutism must be the norm suggests that YOUR grasp on reality isn’t too firm, though…
I love horror films with terrifying vengeful spirits. I get sad when someone kills a harmless spider. I love running around the wasteland of Fallout games and blasting the baddies. I cried when a bird flew into the glass of my bedroom window and died.
Honestly, the comments show who read the article and who didn’t. It’s really not hard to see that the court was looking for a history of conscientious objection and didn’t find any proof, instead finding arguments to the contrary.
Hang on, because I’m morally opposed to war and violence, but I’m not out attending rallies or protests. While my arthritic old body isn’t what anyone wants in battle, if I were healthy, and we had a draft, I’d be a conscientious objector with no history of activism.
Would South Korea put me in jail?
Would you have never mentioned this to anyone, knowing your country has mandatory service? Never protested about mandatory military service? Are you not even a member of an anti-military group? In many countries you have the option of joining. When you don’t have an option not being involved doesn’t make sense.
No, it doesn’t come up very often, and discussing politics and morality is considered impolite. I don’t join “groups” but I don’t see how that makes a difference.
The point being that if you are a conscientious objector in a country with mandatory service and few exceptions, perhaps you should do some stuff as evidence for that. Otherwise you experience the consequences of inaction. In an ideal world armies don’t exist and if so joining would be entirely voluntary but we don’t live in an ideal world.
How long does someone need to have a belief before it counts?
I mean starting objecting too close to service is likely to be seen as faking it to get out. How close is too close is not something for me to determine. The length of time a belief is held has little to do with the strength of a particular belief. But that’s even harder to judge.
It really doesn’t matter because short of being in a publicallt visible leadership position it will never be enough.
Join rallies, but anonymously? Doesn’t count.
Attended a rally openly but no one took a picture? Doesn’t count.
Told one person? Not enough witnesses.
Told multiple friends? Just covering for you.
Decided this week based on an experience, but no rallies or groups doing scheduled stuff? Doesn’t count.
Publicly attended 3 rallies over the last few months? Just doing it to avoid getting drafted, doesn’t count because it wasn’t long enough prior.
The draft is still mandatory in the US for men 18 and above, by the by
Yeah but we’re not under a perma draft order, haven’t had one since 'Nam
It is stupid. The man says he is .orally opposed to the military, but the courts rules that playing a computer game like PUBG makes that a lie.
Well, they ruled that he had no history of being a conscientious objector and did not put any previous effort into spreading his claimed ideology that would point to a history of it. One of the findings was that he didn’t want to join the military because the ‘orders were unfair.’ PUBG was a small part of the argument that he was not as against war and violence as he claimed to be, but the article is on Kotaku, so they know their audience to get clicks.
To my knowledge, the current law is that if you say you’re a conscientious objector, the alternative to military conscription is to work in a prison or correctional facility for 36 months. Getting the previous punishment of 18 months in prison is at least a shorter amount of time.
I wonder if he went to court to get the previous alternative of 18 months in jail over the 36 months of work. At least it’s a shorter amount of your life.
Thanks for the elaboration. But with the 18 month sentence would the alternative service not still be required afterwards. That’s how it would most likely be here in the Netherlands. Punishment for not doing a required thing is not a substitution… it’s punishment, you still have to do the thing.
south Korea is a fascist police state that will use stupid excuses to force men to die for the government.
Kpop stans in shambles but you’re absolutely right
It’s such a shame. I recently watched a video series from some high schoolers visiting south korea and everything seemed so nice. People seemed nice, everything was so clean and the “culture” seemed overall just nice, i don’t know what else to say. Hearing all the bad shit vehind thescenes is just disheartening
I have lived in Korea on and off for fifteen years. Lots of Korea hate online for some reason, maybe because Korea isn’t on the best terms with China and are buddy buddy with the US. Anyway, Korea has its issues, but it’s actually a pretty good place to live.
In relation to the article, military service is mandatory in Korea unless you can give a good enough reason why you can’t serve. The guy in the article couldn’t give a good enough reason, like religious reasons or being vehemently anti war. The judge mentioned PUBG as a side note, but outlets need their rage clicks, so that’s the outlets’ focus.
When all of your vices are crimes you get really good at hiding them.
The country only stopped being a dictatorship in the late 80s, and that was only after it emerged they’d tortured a student to death. And it’s not as if his successors were particularly clean either.
Hell, watch Squid Game or Parasite. Quite clearly there’s something not quite alright in Korean society. Hell, watch Oldboy (2003). Genuinely one of the best (action) movies ever made. That’ll also give you plenty of perspective on human nature and Korea.
The k-pop and k-dramas are quite clearly escapism, rather than a reflection of reality.
I’ve also heard plenty of horror stories about Korean schools from English(often American) language teachers, who were shocked at how bad schools were:
That’s why it’s important to remember that your perceptions and reality can be very disconnected.
According to the article, the court argued that the guy refusing mandatory service for conscientious reasons enjoys playing violent games such as PUBG, calling the reasons given for abstaining from military service in question
South Korean government isn’t exactly a bastion of democracy and sensibility. It’s a fascist hell hole.
South Korea is considered a “full democracy” and ranks higher than the US on The Economist Democracy Index.
Thank you for posting liberal propaganda.
Curious which definition of “liberal” you’re using here.
liberal propaganda.
Wikipedia?
You don’t know what fascism is.
To quote Georgi Dimitrov:
“fascism in power was correctly described by the Thirteenth Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International as the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital. … Fascism is the power of finance capital itself. It is the organization of terrorist vengeance against the working class and the revolutionary section of the peasantry and intelligentsia. In foreign policy, fascism is jingoism in its most brutal form, fomenting bestial hatred of other nations. … The development of fascism, and the fascist dictatorship itself, assume different forms in different countries, according to historical, social and economic conditions and to the national peculiarities, and the international position of the given country.”
lol
Avoiding political opinions on South Korea, the court’s claim would be that because he likes shooting guns at other people in games, his objection to military service has no ground to stand on.
“A paintball player? Clearly you must be a gung-ho militarist who loves war!”
“Have a BDSM kink? You go around kidnapping and torturing people, don’t you?”
“So you like reading murder mysteries, huh? Seems like you’re a murderer yourself, then!”
—Some South Korean judge, probably.
Which is fucking dumb beyond measure and logically, spiritually, and sensibly makes no fucking sense. Military service isn’t a god damn video game
“I miss Call of Duty…”
“We are IN Call of Duty, and it SUCKS!”
By that logic, I should be their divine leader because I play RTS games.
One presumes that there is a certain standard in Korea to establish that you are a CO. Compelled military service makes it harder to avoid this. It seems that the Korean courts believe that liking violent video games means you’re a violent person. It’s a terrible ruling, but it frankly doesn’t surprise me given the context.
We’re finally imprisoning gamers 🙏
I always knew my sonic 3 play through would bring me here.
I can’t believe this isn’t the onion
Goddamn, the actual article is even more absurd than the title.
Man I can’t wait to get charged with adultery when the court finds out how much porn I watch.
If you live in the United States, depending on the state, you might get your wish.
That’s fucking stupid. They should be jailing him for playing a shitty game instead.
but a lower court dismissed this partially because he loves playing PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. (emphasis mine)
I suspect that “partially” is working harder than John Henry in this sentance.
Thank the moronic mother’s who clutch their pearls regarding “violent videogames”. Modern psychiatry has concluded with finality that being violent, or even pro-violence, has nothing to do with videogames. But there are idiots who need to sell books to other idiots, because science denounces the notion.
The human brain registers a fake scenario and you suspend your disbelief. Juxtaposed with actual violence, with physical violence, gun violence, etc, they are not the same.
In the same vein, if anyone has watched a violent movie, they are then also pro-violence?
The answer is no.
The Supreme Court of Korea is a joke and just lost any credability it may have once had.
In my country, conscientious objectors can instead opt to work for charity for the duration of their service I believe. Much better solution than throwing service dodgers in jail. This also proves you’re not doing it just to avoid service.
For an example I know someone who couldn’t serve in the military for health reasons, but instead worked for the food bank for 8 months. The pay is shit, but for some people it’s an option. And if you have a young child, you’re exempt from service for a while anyway, it’s only mandatory if you don’t have significant provable responsibilities to other people. And I believe even then it’s not mandatory in all cases.
