Personally, this "The Battle of Goji" is the best movie about the Korean War.

Personally, this "The Battle of Goji" is the best movie about the Korean War.

I was a civil servant instructor when this movie came out. It is interesting to deal with war from this perspective, but above all, I thought that the tragedy of war clearly shows how far the human beings in it are driven. At least in the future, I thought it would be good to introduce it sometime, thinking that cadets who should become commanders should be aware of these aspects of war.

Then, I heard shocking news. At that time, the principal of the public corporation pointed to "Kojjeon" and said, "It is a movie that the cadets should never see." When asked why, "There is a concern that the cadets' military consciousness may be greatly damaged by justifying human exchanges with the enemy as well as disobeying orders."

Ah.

The reaction that came out of my mouth when I heard that.

As a middle-aged man at the time, I began to vaguely understand why many things I had been going through in the military were 'why'. Why do you neglect liberal arts education so much, why do you want to cut out things other than purposeful education for manipulation, and why do you neglect academic education so much that you are 'deteriorated'.

In my acceptance, the education that the military academy wanted was to create a soldier who performed as ordered, honestly and silently, regardless of what order came down. For a soldier, a worry is a luxury, a soldier does not have to judge, a soldier dies by an order and lives by an order. It was the moment when I felt how unrealistic my educator at the time, who thought that what was important to an officer was not just obeying an order, but the ability to 'why' obey it and to 'explain' the legitimacy of it to his subordinate forces.

Looking at the commanders involved in the insurrection, I can see clearly what the frustration I felt back then was. What they all claim is "I obeyed because it was an order." But we already know that the so-called "Chungam faction" - special commanders, capital defense commanders, and counterintelligence commanders - have long been meeting closely with Kim Yong-hyun, and plans for a pro-Wi coup must have come along the way. "I obeyed orders" would be the most realistic and meanest excuse they can make, but it would have been from what they regarded as a "military spirit" before that.

In other words, we were not training 'thinking commanders'. It's not that we didn't do well, but we actively 'did' it. It is a pervasive perception in the Korean military that the existence of an officer who thinks and judges is just uncomfortable, and that he is a capable commander who puts it into action and produces results regardless of whether it is a legitimate or wrong order. Since I want such an officer, it seems unnecessary to teach ethics, philosophy, and history at the military academy.

It suddenly reminds me of what happened after I was discharged from the military. I met a cadet outside while taking my class. This friend told me this story like a later story. A senior told him, "Don't hang out with Professor Park Sung-ho, you're discouraged. For your information, the senior who said that was also a cadet who took my class. It was one of several cadets who sometimes came to the lab with a big smile and ate my snack in the cabinet like a sparrow in a mill. I don't think it was out of spite. I really thought I was 'dangerous'. Maybe that's the actual situation of the Korean military officers, I suddenly thought.