Korea’s Supreme Court has ruled that a South Korean man must spend one year and six months in prison after refusing the country’s military service. He had argued he was a conscientious objector, but a lower court rejected that in part because he enjoys gambling PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds.
Published in 2017, PUBG was one of the first and most popular battle royale shooters ever. With over 3 million, it still holds the record for most concurrent players on Steam. (Not even the most recent megahit Palworld could surpass that number.) While other games – like Fourteen days And call of Duty: War zone– has usurped its status as a top battle royale title, it still appears regularly on Steam List of most played games and still has a very large community. Among them is a man in South Korea who wants to avoid compulsory military service.
In November 2018, an unnamed South Korean man was charged with violating the country’s military service law, which requires all able-bodied men in the country to perform military service for at least 18 months. As reported by The Korea Herald (and discovered by GamesRadar), the man initially told the court that he had refused to enlist because of his personal anti-war beliefs.
In the 2018 ruling – and upheld by the Supreme Court on February 4 – the court said the defendant “made no effort to propagate or realize what he considers to be his ideological beliefs.” The court also pointed out the man’s love PUBG Further proof that he was not against war and violence.
“The defendant admitted that he enjoyed playing the game frequently.”Battlefields“which involves killing characters with weapons in a virtual reality,” the court added, as reported by The Korea Herald. “The video game is different from reality. But the fact that the defendant – who says he refuses military service because of his belief in opposing violence and war – enjoys such games makes the court question whether his conscientious objection is authentic.”
According to investigators, he refused to join the military because he received “pervasive unfair orders” and regular violations of human rights. The court disagreed and now Korea’s Supreme Court has upheld the original ruling. The defendant must now spend 18 months in prison – the same amount of time he would have had to serve in the military.
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