NONSAN, South Korea – Stuck at home and taking classes online, 20-year-old Kyle Choi decided where he was going to face the pandemic: the South Korean military.
Mr. Choi, a university student in Seoul, accelerated his plans to fulfill his mandatory 18-month service. As a graduate in environmental engineering, Mr. Choi feared that virtual learning was not replicating classroom experiments essential to his education. Then, in late December, he volunteered to camp in this central South Korean city.
“You have to go anyway,” he said. “You better go now.”
All over the world, the military is seeing increases in enlistments as young adults seek refuge from a pandemic that restricts opportunities for work, social life and traditional education. The function usually has health benefits, such as free virus tests, treatment and vaccines. Social detachment made some facets of early military life less strenuous.
Canada saw a 37% increase in military candidates in the last nine months of 2020 over the previous year. For the full year, Australia reported an increase of 9.9% over the previous year. The UK reached its annual recruitment target last spring for the first time in seven years – and is on track to do so again this year, a government spokeswoman said. The US Army saw about 92% of its eligible personnel enlist again for the year ended in September. The previous year’s count was 83%, a spokeswoman said.