Korean Women in Politics Makes Things More Interesting

There was a recent article in the LA Times about a female lawmaker in South Korea that is becoming a thorn in the side of the growing Korean military industrial complex.  He name is Song Young-sun and she has been taking on the generals and defense contractors over what she considers wasteful spending.

Source:

[...] The government had just spent $35 million and a decade doing research on the high-tech shoes, which leaked in the rain and quickly shed their heels. As far as Song Young-sun was concerned, they were just the latest example of what was wrong with the South Korean military.

"You're spending billions of dollars to purchase fighter jets, ships and submarines, but the most important thing on your shopping list should be the morale of your soldiers," Song bluntly told military brass summoned to the National Assembly recently for an annual government audit.

"These boots are their personal vehicles for 16 hours a day. If your feet hurt when you walk, you're not a dedicated soldier. And if you generals lose your men, you've already lost the war."

Only ten years research and 35 millions dollars spent to develop a useless shoe?  The Korean tax payer got a good deal on that one.  The US military would have found a way to spend at least 350 million on research and development to design a shoe that doesn't work.

Even in a nation famous for its sharp-elbowed political theater, the performance was memorable. But it was classic Song, a policeman's daughter whose college hero was steely British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

Song, a veteran military analyst who is one of only 41 women among 299 national lawmakers, has unabashedly used her post on the powerful National Defense Committee to help keep the highest-ranking military minds in check, publicly questioning the nation's military readiness in the face of an aggressive North Korea and its million-man army.

[...]

To win the battle, she's not afraid of resorting to stunts: She once showed up at the National Assembly with a suitcase full of over-the-counter chemicals, giving a demonstration on how they could easily be combined to make deadly sarin gas.

On an impromptu inspection of a military contractor whose military-ration kimchi once contained a dead rat, she announced, "If I had a son in the military and he had to eat this kind of garbage, I'd kill all the generals."

But it's not just the generals who have felt her wrath. Song has blasted overprotective mothers for turning many soldiers into "mama's boys" and has proposed that military service should be mandatory for women, not just men. [...]

You can follow the link for the entire article about her.  I think she is right. Military or public service of some kind should be mandatory for all women if it is mandatory for all men.  This double standard hurts Korean women because if they are not treated like equal citizens in their obligation to support and defend their country, it is easy for men to abuse and discriminate against them in other ways like the world of business because a precedent of men and women not being equal has already been institutionalized.