In South Korea, draft dodgers go to prison, many for shared beliefs

[Yahoo! News]

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Kim Ji-gwan has a succinct explanation for why he, his father, and two brothers all chose to go to jail rather than be drafted into the South Korean armed forces. In the past, the US and many other countries accepted religious beliefs as grounds for opting out of military service. The UN Human Rights Council reports that 669 of 723 conscientious objectors in jail worldwide as of last November are Korean. And almost all of these prisoners are Jehovah’s Witnesses, an evangelical Christian sect whose members refuse to serve because, they say, the Bible teaches people to "love one another." Since the Korean War ended in 1953, an astonishing 17,549 Jehovah’s Witnesses have gone to jail in South Korea for their beliefs.

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