Militarising national security through criminalisation of conscientious objectors to conscription in South Korea

Since the introduction of universal male conscription in 1949, the South Korean government has imprisoned the conscientious objectors to conscription as jeopardising national security. Historically, conscription, producing citizen-soldiers and fixing discursive boundary of the nation, has militarised understandings of citizenship and national security. However, through their alternative performance of citizenship, the conscientious objectors have indicated that the definition and practice of national security is open to negotiation and change. In this respect, I demonstrate how the South Korean state’s criminalisation of the conscientious objection has militarised the understanding of national security. The deconstructive discourse analysis of the South Korean Supreme Court and Constitutional Court decisions since the 2000s on the conscientious objection shows that the discursive construction of national security depends on fixing the meaning of social minorities as ‘internal threats’.