ROK Military to Begin to Offer Vegan Meals
This seems more like PR than a major policy change:
The military will provide vegetarian and Muslim enlistees with a vegan diet excluding any meat and ham starting next year, the defense ministry said Sunday.
From February, prospective draftees will be asked to mark if they are a vegetarian when they take physical examinations, the ministry said.
Two columns marked as “vegetarian” in both Korean and English will be available on the form.
Such personal information will be sent to the unit that the enlistees will serve in, allowing for a systematic ration program for vegetarian and Muslim soldiers.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link, but currently in the ROK military only two soldiers have identified themselves as Muslim and vegetarian.
No vegans in the trenches…
Well, yeah, if the US wants to pay the ROK megabucks again to station support troops in the middle east it totally makes sense to have a Halaal meal to feed their terps if they have to go into the field.
I mean, “In English” and full of Western Foods. This is for interpreters and TCNs during an expeditionary op or UN Peacekeeping op.
What part of “uniform” is too tough here? I honestly don’t see the ROK as strengthening their national security. Of course, the US has made some mistakes lately, too; but logistics is how wars are won. And the ROK just made war more complicated for themselves.
Times are changing. Couple of years ago, if you walked into a restaurant and told the owner ajumma to take the meat out of the bibimpap because you were vegan, she would have thrown a fit and kicked you out.
Now, Lotteria is selling vegan burgers and rolled it out with a big ad campaign and there are restaurant chains specializing in salads. Some restaurants whose main menus are meat based even offer separate vegan meals. Heck even the Mexican restaurant I frequent will put tofu instead of beef, chicken, pork or shrimp into the taco or burrito if one chooses to.