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Female students get military training at army camp Aug. 6, GYEONGSAN, South Korea -- Female students from Yeungnam University try to push their opponents out of a trench at an Army unit in the southwestern city of Iksan on Aug. 6, as part of the unit's summer camp. The university is located in the southeastern city of Gyeongsan. (Photo courtesy of the university) (Yonhap)
Via Yonhap.
Could you imagine the reaction if in the US Army we had women doing mud wrestling?
11:05 am on August 9th, 2009 1
Yeah, my male students always regale me with stories about mud wrestling and jello wrestling during their basic training. And the older ones still remember the wet t-shirt contest that was a fixture in old hazing rituals.
12:21 pm on August 9th, 2009 2
does this apply to only female students or do male students do this also? very hot, but it would be sexist if they didn't do the same with males I think.
1:34 pm on August 9th, 2009 3
On the other hand, if we put a live cam on it, we could help pay down the national debt by cutting into the defense budget…
5:01 pm on August 9th, 2009 4
Yeah, both on this site and on some of the news sites it seems popular to have students go through some semblance of basic training as part of a school trip. I know some female students in Gwangju did it a little while ago, and there were other pictures of elementary school students having a go.
I think the backlash would be intense in the US if, say, the AP ran pictures of female soldiers mud wrestling, but that's not to say one perspective is better or worse than the other. But what gets me with this, and with the article I'm going to link in the next paragraph, is that this is a country right next to one considered among the most dangerous in the world. No doubt tensions are high, but with tens of thousands of US personnel in-country, THIS is what the local military is up to?
I don't recall you writing about this, GI Korea, but the Joongang Ilbo had a nice fluffy article about Korean basic training last year:
http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?a…
I wrote about it a little in August.
http://briandeutsch.blogspot.com/2008/10/joongang…
3:12 pm on August 10th, 2009 5
And, what self-defense skills does this activity reinforce?
3:55 am on August 11th, 2009 6
Awesome! There should be MOAR female mud wrestling. Then they all need to go shower up and scrub each other off. Youch!