Katherine Bennett
Regardless of U.S. veterans receiving higher medical care after a serious regulation handed two years in the past, recipients gripe concerning the high quality and variety of companies the Division of Veterans Affairs (VA) offers. Nonetheless, the company is a benchmark for veterans’ care that many U.S. allies use for comparability.
South Korea, lengthy one of many United States’ closest allies, has in recent times considerably elevated its finances for veterans and their relations. Regardless that it lags behind the People’ stage of help, the VA within the U.S. can be taught from its East Asian associate.
Veterans’ care in South Korea
The Korean Struggle ceased in 1953 with an armistice settlement, however there’s by no means been a peace treaty. Formally, North and South Korea stay at conflict.
In June 2002, the 2 Koreas have been having fun with a thaw of their relationship. South Korean President Kim Dae-jung had begun a program of détente with the North referred to as the “Sunshine Coverage,” with cooperative enterprise ventures and temporary conferences of relations lengthy separated by the international locations’ division. That month, South Koreans have been absorbed in co-hosting the 2002 FIFA World Cup.
It got here as a shock when two North Korean patrol boats crossed a maritime border dividing the 2 international locations within the Yellow Sea and opened fireplace on South Korean patrol boats close to Yeonpyeong Island.
Lee Hee-wan was then a lieutenant, junior grade, within the Republic of Korea Navy, serving on board the patrol boat PKM 357.
ROK Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs
“We fought for 31 minutes after North Korea invaded,” Lee mentioned. “Twenty-seven of the crewmates, among the many 27, six have been killed in motion, and 21 have been severely injured, together with myself. And I personally went by 9 surgical procedures and needed to be hospitalized for a yr within the Military Hospital.”
The incident grew to become generally known as the Second Battle of Yeonpyeong. Whereas it is little remembered immediately within the U.S., South Korea nonetheless marks its anniversary every year with memorial companies for the useless. The battle even impressed a 2015 South Korean movie, Northern Restrict Line.
For Lee, the recollections stay contemporary. His proper leg was amputated, and he nonetheless suffers post-traumatic stress. Nonetheless, Lee was in a position to return to responsibility within the ROK Navy, serving 28 years and retiring as a captain. He made it his mission to assist his fellow veterans, not solely from South Korea, however from all 22 United Nations member international locations that defended the nation in the course of the Korean Struggle. Now, he is vice minister of Patriots and Veterans Affairs.
“The ministry, since 60 years in the past, has been benchmarking many different international locations, particularly our allies, together with the USA,” Lee mentioned. “In Korea, we name our heroes ‘nationwide advantage recipients,’ and we help these folks, our heroes, in three large methods.”
The primary means the nation helps these nationwide advantage recipients is thru direct monetary help, together with incapacity pensions.
“Second comes the medical help,” Lee mentioned. “To alleviate and to help such veterans with disabilities, now we have established six space hospitals for veterans … and we offer built-in help, together with medical remedy, psychological remedy, and the last-stage life remedy for these veterans who’re in previous age particularly.”
South Korea at present has about 36,000 surviving Korean Struggle veterans and almost 171,000 Vietnam Struggle veterans. With the latter group now of their 70s and 80s, Lee mentioned the nation is assigning civilian hospitals to take care of veterans as effectively. That medical care covers greater than 60,000 veterans and their kids classed as victims of “defoliants” – that’s, chemical brokers reminiscent of Agent Orange, utilized by the U.S. in Vietnam.
“Lastly,” Lee mentioned, “we additionally help the descendants and youngsters of these heroes who’ve handed away in service. And we help them by training help and in addition occupational help, and the federal government proactively (helps) these members and descendants of the society, in order that they’ll reside a greater life as a descendant of our heroes.”
The influence of the tried martial regulation declaration
South Korea’s veterans’ affairs program originated in 1962, with the creation of the Army Assist Administration. It was upgraded to the Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs within the Nineteen Eighties. Nevertheless it solely grew to become a cabinet-level ministry in June of final yr, as an initiative of President Yoon Suk Yeol.
“Korea has a comparatively latest historical past of being a rich nation and in a position to present for anybody after retirement, veterans or in any other case,” mentioned Henry Haggard, a nonresident fellow with Rice College’s Baker Institute who beforehand served as the highest advisor on Korean politics on the U.S. Embassy in Seoul.
Beneath Yoon, the veterans’ finances for roughly 833,000 veterans and relations went up. It now accounts for about $4.5 billion per yr, about 1% of South Korea’s whole authorities spending.
Haggard mentioned South Koreans are conflicted about their veterans. On one hand, necessary navy service means most individuals have both served within the navy or have relations who’ve. However, they’re cautious from a long time of navy rule, which solely ended within the late Nineteen Eighties.
“There had been a rising nostalgia because the navy rule recedes,” Haggard mentioned — not for the brutality of navy rule, which resulted in a whole lot of deaths, “however nostalgia for the ten% development that occurred for these a long time, the financial development, nostalgia for the readability of imaginative and prescient that these leaders and the Korean folks needed to set up firms like world main firms like Samsung and POSCO and others.”
That was earlier than Yoon declared martial regulation earlier this month, alleging that his political opponents have been collaborating with North Korea to undermine South Korea’s constitutional authorities. Martial regulation lasted barely six hours. Yoon withdrew the declaration after the complete Nationwide Meeting voted to override it. The Nationwide Meeting impeached Yoon on Saturday — suspending him from workplace and placing his political agenda in danger, together with elevated spending on veterans.
“Veterans points, in all probability in Korea, I feel wrongheadedly, are seen as a conservative trigger,” Haggard mentioned. “So, I feel it’ll be more durable for folks to discover a bipartisan form of help for higher recognition, whether or not that’s by pensions or in any other case, of veterans in Korea.”
How South Korean and U.S. veterans’ care examine
Over the previous few a long time, South Korea has vaulted from developing-nation standing to develop into one of many world’s largest economies. However its gross home product remains to be only a fraction of that of the U.S. So, too, is its inhabitants of veterans. The result’s that the U.S. – which spends 4% of its finances on the VA, greater than $336 billion – covers way more vets.
“I’d in all probability be secure to say that we could also be that gold commonplace that our allies are in terms of how we as a nation take care of our veterans,” mentioned Terrence Hayes, the VA’s deputy assistant secretary for public affairs. “There’s about 19 million veterans in our nation, however proper now, we solely have about 9 million of these veterans in our system. In an ideal world, we’d need all of them to return to us.”
In comparison with the six veterans’ hospitals in all of South Korea, the VA operates 170 medical facilities. That does not embody the almost 1,200 outpatient websites the division additionally manages across the nation, making it the most important built-in healthcare system within the U.S.
The VA shouldn’t be with out its issues. In 2014, dozens of veterans died awaiting care at its services in Phoenix, a scandal that pressured out its then chief, Secretary Eric Shinseki.
Since then, every presidential administration has steadily elevated funding towards veterans’ affairs. It is not all the time clear that the cash is being spent successfully. Take the funding dedicated to take care of post-traumatic stress dysfunction, which has soared amongst veterans within the post-9/11 period.
“We regularly hyperlink PTSD and veteran suicide, and the suicide numbers haven’t moved a lot in any respect,” mentioned Patrick Murray, legislative director for the Veterans of International Wars (VFW). “Regardless that more cash has been allotted to battle this downside, we’re not seeing any demonstrative outcomes up or down. It stayed constant for the previous 5, 10 years, and we need to ultimately drive that all the way down to zero.”
Congress handed a collection of reforms to veterans’ care over the previous decade, culminating within the PACT Act of 2022.
“The PACT Act was enormous,” Murray mentioned. “Generally I don’t know if there are phrases to explain how influential for our veterans it may be.”
The brand new regulation addresses almost two dozen medical situations associated to their service that weren’t absolutely coated earlier than, lots of them associated to publicity to chemical brokers – reminiscent of Agent Orange within the Vietnam Struggle.
“That was 50 years in the past, and so they needed to wait a long time. They needed to battle for years to get the care and the advantages and have it acknowledged as formally attributable to Agent Orange publicity,” Murray mentioned. “Gulf Struggle veterans and a few of the low-level sarin that they have been uncovered to, that (additionally) took far too lengthy…That’s what the PACT Act did. It cleared lots of that off the plate.”
Vets in South Korea, and their relations, had been getting this take care of years.
Be aware: Andrew Schneider visited South Korea in September as a part of the Korea-United States Journalists Change, beneath the auspices of the East-West Middle and the Korea Press Basis.
