Cheon Ha-ram slams 'gradual' military service exemption reform: 'Could take 100 years'

Amid growing public criticism over military service exemptions granted to members of the men's national football team who won gold at the 2026 Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games, Reform Party lawmaker Cheon Ha-ram said Defense Minister Kang Shin-cheol was "talking tough because public opinion is scary right now," but warned that the ministry's proposed approach of gradual abolition "could take 100 years."

Appearing on CBS Radio's News Show on Thursday morning, Cheon criticized Minister Kang's stated goal of "gradually reducing and ultimately abolishing military service exemptions" as falling short. "What they're proposing is reducing the number of qualifying competitions and introducing a points system, but the truth is the system itself has run its course," he said.

Cheon went on to question the underlying rationale for the exemptions. "Does winning an Olympic gold medal really promote national prestige?" he said. "This system was created when we had to do whatever it took to demonstrate national superiority in ideological competition with communist states like North Korea and the Soviet Union — but that competition is over."

"Liberal democracy and the market economy won," he said. "It's right to scrap this system cleanly."

As an alternative, Cheon proposed allowing athletes and artists to defer their military service until their early-to-mid 30s.

He said the arts sector presented an even more serious problem than sports. "At least sports has the Olympics," he said. "Artists get exemptions through competitions like concours — that's where the real issue is."

"I also think the heavy bias toward classical music is unfair," he said, adding that the right approach was to use this opportunity to scrap the exemption system entirely and replace it with a deferment model.