Not so smart

The South Korean military has a bit of a problem with smartphones:

A growing number of South Korea Army officers are denouncing the smart phone as the most powerful weapon the North Koreans have. The problem is that nearly all South Korean soldiers own smart phones and will go to great lengths to hang on to them, even when forbidden to carry them while on duty. In many cases, smart phones are not allowed on military bases. All this because smart phones distract soldiers from their work, especially boring chores like guard duty. This was discovered, with increasing frequency over the last few years as NCOs and officers out, especially at night, checking up on the guards, found the troops engrossed in some smart phone game, or texting or reading an e-book. Despite a growing number of soldiers being punished for having, and misusing, smart phones on duty, troops continue to risk using the devices. Some military psychologists are describing this attachment to their cell phones as an addiction. South Korea already recognizes addiction to the Internet or computer games as something worthy of serious medical care. All this is compounded by the fact that most South Korean soldiers are conscripts, who don't want to be in the military anyway.

I was going to make a point here about conscription, but the author of the article did it for me:

This is not the first time such a problem developed. In the 1970s and 80s there were portable (hand held) radios and cassette tape players to distract troops on guard duty. The U.S. military solved the problem by ending conscription and making it clear that anyone caught on duty with these portable devices would lose their jobs. Thus the smart phone may be the final cause of ending conscription in South Korea.

Exactly. Professional soldiers are volunteers. Period. At best, conscripts are lukewarm amateurs (World War II), and at worst unenthusiastic bullet-stoppers (Vietnam).

South Korea needs to stop trying to match the North in manpower and concentrate instead on quality. Conscription is a concept which should be relegated to the same dustbin as slavery -- not out of any moral convictions, but for the same reason slavery went away: because it was no longer efficient. You can teach a peasant to carry and level a spear, and he'll do so out of sheer survival instinct. Teaching that same peasant to operate all the complicated equipment a modern soldier is required to master -- to say nothing of the complex tactics -- is both impractical and a waste of resources. In the modern world, one well-trained volunteer soldier is worth an entire squad of conscripts.

Back in the 1980s, when we were still training to fight the Soviets, we were taught to single out and kill the squad leader of a Soviet rifle platoon. Once he was dead, the rest of the squad were just confused rubes holding equipment they barely understood. Since there was no depth of leadership training in the Soviet Army, none of the squad members could even take over to get them all out of the line of fire. Remember that we're not talking about Russian citizens defending their homeland against invading Nazis; they were Soviet conscripts from conquered countries being forced to attack Europe in the front lines. Consequently, (so the theory went), they'd either break and run or simply surrender rather than be wiped out. The object of war is to defeat the enemy, not to kill all of his troops.

Of course, we never got to test that theory, as Ronbo destroyed the USSR without us ever firing a shot in anger. Would that we had another of him...