When South Korean soldier Jun Mi-sun was assigned to a coveted post as a military police investigator, her superiors quickly sidelined her to a desk job. Why? “Because women aren’t supposed to see dead bodies,” she recalled. Investigating death, they said, was “too much for a female soldier.” A male peer took over her duties while Jun remained as an investigator only on paper.

That was 20 years ago. Today, women make up 11 percent of South Korean military officers—up from about 2 percent two decades ago. Their ranks are set to grow further as they push into most corners of the armed forces that were once entirely dominated by men—including investigating deaths—and the military steps up efforts to lure more women, with a goal of increasing their percentage to 15.3 percent by 2027.

South Korean President Lee Jae-myung also pledged to increase the number of female military officers as part of his national security agenda when he took office in June 2025. Now, some politicians and experts argue the country should go further and draft women alongside men—reviving a highly divisive issue interwoven with national defense, gender equality, and anti-feminist populism.

The push for more women soldiers emerged out of desperation, driven by the crisis of demographics.

The 1950-53 Korean War ended with a cease-fire rather than a peace treaty, meaning that the two Koreas technically remain at war. The divided peninsula stands as the last legacy of the Cold War. About 28,500 U.S. troops are stationed in South Korea, a key Asian ally, to help guard against the threats from nuclear-armed North Korea. With defense being a national priority, all able-bodied young men in South Korea are conscripted to serve as rank-and-file troops for at least 18 months.

But the pool of eligible men has shrunk as birthrates collapsed, raising alarm over the country’s war readiness.

South Korea has regularly broken its own record for having the world’s lowest birthrate: 0.98 babies per woman in 2018, 0.84 in 2020, and 0.75 in 2024. The annual number of births has dropped by nearly 70 percent in three decades. If the trend persists, the country’s population of a little more than 50 million will be halved in 60 years.

Warnings about shrinking troop numbers simmered for years and reached a tipping point in 2025, when new data showed the stunning scale of the decline. According to the Defense Ministry, the total number of active-duty troops fell by 20 percent in just six years—from 560,000 troops in 2019 to 450,000 in 2025—well below the 500,000 long considered necessary to deter North Korea based on the Pyongyang’s estimated military capabilities.

“The issue of demographic cliff is… the biggest structural challenge faced by South Korea’s overall defense strategy,” said Jo Bee-yun, a research fellow at the Sejong Institute think tank.

Kim Yun-tae, a former head of Korea Institute for Defense Analyses, has warned that the number of troops would sink further to around 300,000 by 2040—which would spell “a complete collapse” of the military structure, which was built on the basis of 500,000 soldiers.

“Without serious reforms, a grave crisis and disintegration of our national defense system would be unavoidable,” he said at a forum held last October.

Experts have proposed alternatives such as high-tech modernization of military assets using artificial intelligence or drones, a restructuring of the command systems to design them for fewer troops, and better pay and working conditions for troops to attract more recruits. But one option has repeatedly surfaced, albeit cautiously—conscripting women.

Women are exempt from the draft but can volunteer as officers—their history in the armed forces dates back to 1948. Their numbers have consistently grown over the past decade, often exceeding the Defense Ministry’s targets, especially after the military moved in the 2010s to open all posts that’d previously banned women. Their presence has helped fill the void left by the declining number of conscripts and male officers who quit over poor pay or working conditions.

Now, the question of whether to draft women has gained greater urgency amid dramatic troop shortages.

The Defense Ministry says it has no immediate plan to draft women. But there has been recent pressure on the military to open rank-and-file positions to women volunteers. Kim Mi-Ae, a lawmaker from the rightwing People Power Party, introduced a bill last summer requiring the military to allow women volunteers so as “not to discriminate against women” hoping to serve that way. And the elite Korea Military Academy—whose alumni dominate the military’s top ranks—published a highly publicized report in 2025, calling for female conscription and citing countries such as Sweden and Norway as models.

“It’s not fair to force only men to serve. Women are conscripted even in countries like Israel … or Sweden,” said Chun In-bum, a retired army lieutenant general and a senior fellow of the National Institute for Deterrence Studies in the United States.

Chun, an influential figure in U.S.-Korea military ties and a prominent commentator on national defense, warned that the lack of soldiers is already “creating stress throughout the army,” describing the expansion of women in the military as a “viable solution.”

While he believes that women may be unsuited to combat positions, which often involve carrying heavy tank ammunition or artillery rounds, modern-day warfare has changed things. There may be areas in which women can “excel,” he said. “They can do well in many fields like cyber operations, drone warfare, or logistics.”

Conscription of women is also a popular rallying cry among South Korean anti-feminists, especially young men. Politicians have often invoked the idea to appeal to young male voters, especially after now-impeached President Yoon Suk-yeol rose to power in 2022 on an openly anti-feminist platform.

Public opinions are divided, with surveys showing mixed results. But support among young adults—not only young men but also women—is rising. A survey last year by Women News, a local news outlet dedicated to women’s rights issues, showed that nearly 40 percent of women in their 20s and 30s who were polled supported mandatory service—compared to 29 percent who opposed it.

“I’m so sick and tired of men saying, ‘oh, then women should go to the military’ whenever we talk about all the discrimination and violence against women,” said Kim Min-sung, a 20-year-old college student. “If serving in the military would finally shut them up, why not?”

Kim added that she hoped mandatory service would help young women learn physical self-defense, build confidence, and gain the experience of teamwork and solidarity with other women.

Yet drafting women—or significantly expanding their numbers—raises complicated questions about how to integrate them into a deeply male-dominated and paternalistic institution, in a country with one of the worst records on women’s rights among the world’s highest-income economies.

Despite their growing numbers, women in military service still face pervasive discrimination and harassment. Of the 714 officers promoted to general from 2015 to 2023, only 14 of them—or 1.96 percent—were women. Female soldiers are often relegated to support roles or forced to entertain or pour drinks for the top brass at after-hour drinking sessions common in South Korean workplaces, according to former service women and a state survey.

About 32 percent of service women experience sexual harassment—compared to 8 percent of service men—and 60 percent viewed sex crimes as a serious problem in the military. Reported cases—from rape to increasingly widespread artificial intelligence-generated deepfake porn—jumped from 135 in 2020 to 867 in 2023, though experts say most cases go unreported.

Sexual violence against service women plagues many countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. In South Korea, stories of service women killing themselves after being sexually abused made headlines for years. At least five such victims have taken their own lives since 2013, including an air force master sergeant and a navy chief petty officer who died just three months apart in 2021.

As recently as last November, a media report emerged that an army staff sergeant attempted suicide after being sexually assaulted by three superiors on separate occasions.

“Having more female soldiers, let alone conscripting women, requires the military to thoroughly reform its male-centric culture, collective mindset, and work practices—starting from promoting more women into decision-making roles,” said Bang Hye-Lin, a former Marine Corps captain. “I’m not sure how willing the military is to make those changes right now.”

Bang herself survived a slew of harassment and even an attempted rape but didn’t report it, thinking that doing so would be futile. Fed up, she retired in 2017 after serving for nearly a decade. Now she works as an advocate at the Center for Military Human Rights Korea.

On a basic level, she noted, many bases still lack women’s restrooms, forcing soldiers to walk long distances—sometimes over hills—just to relieve themselves, or to forgo eating and drinking entirely during training.

Supporters of drafting women argue that having more female soldiers could help alleviate gender disparities. But the claim lacks evidence, said Kim Elli, a gender studies professor at Sogang University in Seoul.

“Equal access to a field does not automatically lead to gender equality within it. We’ve seen the evidence in our labor market and our politics,” said Kim, who has extensively studied women in the military. The military is a part of society at large, and how well the military can integrate women depends heavily on the level of gender parity in society in the first place, she said.

Choi Ju-young, a 22-year-old college student, said that it is “unfair to impose mandatory military service, when gender inequality in so many other areas of society remains unchanged or is improving at a snail’s pace.”

“I believe the risk far outweighs the benefits,” she said, “especially in a society that remains deeply unequal for women and where violence against women is still widespread.”

Jun, the former military police investigator, watched military culture slowly change over two decades of service until her retirement in 2020.

“Of course, there are still so many challenges for women. But the military has also changed as more women entered this field, with less violence in barracks and more awareness about human rights,” said the 50-year-old, who has two teenage daughters.

“I see this as an opportunity for women to have a good career in this influential institution and an opportunity for the military to become more diverse, open, and democratic in line with the changes in wider society.”

If women were drafted, would she be willing to send her daughters to the armed forces?

“Sure,” she said, smiling. “Honestly, I think they can perform way better than many boys I saw in the military.”