"Six in Ten Koreans Support Female Conscription, Survey Finds"

Survey by Reform Party Think Tank: Reform Research Institute

Majority Support for Female Conscription at 59.6%

Six out of ten Koreans agree that women should be included in the military draft, regardless of their own gender. A selective volunteer military system, where only those who wish to enlist serve, received more support than opposition, but questions were raised regarding its effectiveness.

Sungshin Women's University held the "Sungshin Smart Leader Camp" for about 100 high school and university female students over three days and two nights. Photo unrelated to the article. The Asia Business Daily db.

According to a survey on military service reform conducted by the Reform Institute, a think tank of the Reform Party, on 1,006 adults aged 18 and older across the country, these results were revealed on August 19, 2026.

In the survey, the proposition of including women in the draft—referred to as the "female conscription system"—was supported by 59.6% of respondents, 25.6 percentage points higher than the opposition at 34.0%. Among men, 64.8% supported female conscription, while 54.5% of women did so, showing that a majority in both groups supported it. In particular, the approval rate among men in their 20s and 30s was 71.7%, the highest across all demographic groups.

Support for introducing a selective volunteer system stood at 47.4%, higher than the opposition at 41.9%. However, regarding its effectiveness, 49.9% said it would not help in securing adequate troop numbers, outweighing the 42.7% who believed it would. When asked about the future direction of the military service system, the largest share—41.5%—said both the draft and a volunteer system should be operated in parallel. 35.4% supported maintaining the current draft system, while 10.6% advocated for a full transition to a volunteer military system.

However, among those in their 20s and 30s—the actual age group subject to conscription—a different trend emerged from the overall public opinion. In the 20s group, 48.3% favored maintaining the current draft, and in the 30s group, 47.6% did so, both higher than other age brackets. Looking only at men in their 20s and 30s, 49.0% preferred maintaining the current draft, while the proportion of those who were "strongly opposed" to the selective volunteer system was 41.1% among men in their 20s and 41.2% among those in their 30s. Among men in their 20s and 30s, strong opposition stood at 40.8%, not significantly different from the 41.9% among women.

Lee Junseok, leader of the Reform Party, said, "A strong opposition rate of 41% was recorded among the 2030 generation, who would actually be subject to this system, regardless of gender," adding, "Discussions on revising the military service system should start on the premise of agreement from the generation that would bear its burden."

The survey was conducted using 100% wireless telephone automated responses (ARS), with a response rate of 2.30% and a sampling error of ±3.2 percentage points at a 95% confidence level. As this was a social issue survey and not an election poll, it is not subject to reporting to the National Election Poll Deliberation Commission.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.