{"id":71348,"date":"2023-11-29T06:00:15","date_gmt":"2023-11-29T12:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/?p=71348"},"modified":"2023-11-29T06:33:57","modified_gmt":"2023-11-29T12:33:57","slug":"old-mans-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/2023\/11\/29\/old-mans-war\/","title":{"rendered":"Old Man’s War"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Korea’s army of senior citizens ready for battle. ‘I don’t remember the rifles being so heavy’<\/a><\/h1>\n

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When I read this article it reminded me of a 2005 science fiction novel by John Scalzi titled “Old Man’s War”<\/a>. <\/em><\/h2>\n

In the novel due to a raging interplanetary war with an alien race for resources and a dwindling population of military age males in which to fight it, former retired soldiers are asked to come back and undergo a procedure whereby their 70 plus year old minds are transferred to a younger version of their genetically enhanced 20 year old bodies. It was a really great book and like a lot of Scalzi’s work, dived into some social and geo-political issues that are just now in 2023, fully coming into maturity.<\/em><\/h2>\n<\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dressed in borrowed camouflage fatigues, they fumbled with their ammunition belts and K2 assault rifles. Some had white hair and a slow, shuffling gait; their average age was 63, the oldest 75.<\/h2>\n

It was the most unconventional batch of trainees that the 52nd Infantry Division\u2019s Seocho Reserve Forces Training Center had ever seen, and Lt. Col. Hwang Hyeon-seok received them with a strained smile, desperately hoping that none of them would get hurt.<\/h2>\n

\u201cI couldn\u2019t sleep at all last night,\u201d Hwang told one of them with a nervous laugh. \u201cYour enthusiasm worries me.\u201d<\/h2>\n

His concern was met with good-natured chuckles, but no reassurances.<\/h2>\n

Excluding the two women in the group, most of these retirees or near-retirees had undergone\u00a0South Korea\u2019s compulsory military service<\/a>\u00a0in their youth. But the decades of rust were showing.<\/h2>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t remember the rifles being so heavy,\u201d said 62-year-old Kang Shin-kwang.<\/h2>\n

As a young conscript four decades ago, Kang was a machine gunner stationed near the border with North Korea. But today, as the sticker on the right chest area of his shirt indicates, he serves in the Senior Army.<\/h2>\n

Founded in the summer by a group of civilians with no affiliation with the military, the Senior Army \u2014 which has about 500 members \u2014 is part senior citizens\u2019 social club and part volunteer organization.<\/h2>\n

But it also has more profound ambitions as a solution to the effects of\u00a0South Korea\u2019s dismal fertility rate<\/a>, which, as the lowest in the world, has spurred fears that the military will soon struggle to fill its ranks.<\/h2>\n

RTWT.<\/a><\/h2>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Korea’s army of senior citizens ready for battle. ‘I don’t remember the rifles being so heavy’   When I read this article it reminded me of a 2005 science fiction novel by John Scalzi titled “Old Man’s War”. In the novel due to a raging interplanetary war with an alien race for resources and a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[3786,5445,74,5429,1286,2820,5573,3594,12416,7988],"tags":[9380,658,16860,5575,6918,9077,9036,16861,11268,9423],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71348"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71348"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71348\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71357,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71348\/revisions\/71357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}