Page 264 - 2020 Defence White Paper

Section

1 Embedding a New Barracks
Culture Trusted by the

People

By innovating the barracks culture, the ROK Armed Forces has made significant
achievements, including reduced casualties and desertion from duty. Accordingly, the
MND aims to embed a new barracks culture trusted by the people by ensuring a level
of autonomy and human rights for servicemembers that match the expectation of the
people while maintaining military readiness.

1. Fostering a Barracks Culture Driven by Autonomy and
Responsibility

Harmony between Autonomy Efforts to innovate the barracks culture,
and Responsibility promoted since 2014, has made significant

achievements such as reduction in casualties
and abandonment of military duty or post without permission. As such, it is being
well-received by the public for fostering a worry-free service environment. However,
with the public’s expectation on human rights and welfare of servicemembers
increasing, calls for cultivating a barracks culture that harmonizes autonomy and
responsibility while the ROK Armed Forces maintains a steadfast readiness posture
are continued.
Therefore, the MND will continue to make efforts to foster a sound barracks
life where creative thoughts and diversity of servicemembers are respected, and
strive to cultivate a barracks culture of autonomy and responsibility to enable
servicemembers to transform into "democratic citizens in uniforms" who can take
responsibility for their behavior.

Use of Personal Mobile Phones As an effort to relieve the sense of isolation
among servicemembers, receive-only mo-
bile phones for common use and public video telephones have been provided since
2015. Moreover, to guarantee servicemembers’ basic rights in a wider scope, the
Use of mobile MND collected opinions from all members and conducted a trial operation before
phones at
barracks after work fully allowing the "use of mobile phones after work" in July 2020. The use of mobile

2020 Defense White Paper