Tag: Expert Infantryman Badge

Congratulations to First Lieutenant Ji Eun Jeong for being awarded the US Army’s Expert Infantryman Badge.  She is considered the first female ROK Army officer to receive the badge.  Two years ago two female ROK Army NCOs became the first Korean females to be awarded the EIB:

May 26, 2016 – CAMP CASEY, Republic of Korea – Soldiers congratulate Republic of Korea Army 1st Lt. Ji Eun Jeong, a platoon leader in the 115th Mechanized Infantry Battalion, 90th Mech. Inf. Brigade, 30th Mech. Inf. Division, on earning an U.S. Army Expert Infantryman Badge. Jeong, a 25-year-old from Seoul, South Korea, is the first female ROK officer to complete the EIB. South Korean officers are not actually authorized to wear the U.S. badge, but were pinned during the ceremony and awarded a certificate of achievement. (U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Keith Anderson, 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team Public Affairs, 1st Cav. Div.)  [PACOM.mil]

Here are some statistics of how many failed to pass the testing:

Included in the final number to complete the challenge were more than 40 ROKA Soldiers, including Republic of Korea Army 1st Lt. Ji Eun Jeong, a platoon leader in the 115th Mechanized Infantry Battalion, 90th Mech. Inf. Brigade, 30th Mech. Inf. Division. Jeong was the first female ROK officer to earn the EIB. A female ROK NCO completed the grueling challenge last year to earn her EIB.

“I want a specialty for infantry, and EIB is a challenge for female Soldiers,” said Jeong.

Of the 627 Soldiers who started the EIB testing in South Korea May 22, only 131 finished and earned the honor of wearing the Expert Infantryman Badge. And of those, 29 distinguished themselves as “True Blue” Infantryman by successfully completing every event without retest and receiving first time “go’s” on every evaluation – 18 U.S. and 11 South Korean Soldiers.  [DVIDS]

That is a pretty high attrition rate and thus shows how hard the awardees worked to get the EIB. According to the Korea Times 1st Lt. Jeong did 200 pushups, 200 sit-ups and ran 7 kilometers each day to prepare for the test.  She also qualified for the ROK Army’s version of the EIB in November 2015 which made her eligible to compete for the US Army’s EIB last month.  Incredibly the attrition rate for the ROK Army EIB is much higher than the US Army EIB:

Only infantry personnel are eligible to participate in both the EIB test and South Korea’s equivalent test.

The U.S. military officially opened the door for women on ground combat jobs beginning in January and there were no female participants from the U.S. side this year, according to the South Korean military.

In November 2015, Jeong was the only woman among the four successful candidates who took the South Korean infantry test. A total of 85 soldiers took the test then.  [Korea Times]

Only 4 of 85 passed the ROK Army EIB testing which is pretty amazing.  It sounds like the US Army get our infantrymen to compete in the ROK Army EIB testing for an additional skills challenge.

Here is an interesting article about two ROK female infantry NCOs that were awarded the US Expert Infantryman Badge:

Two women have earned the U.S. Army’s coveted Expert Infantryman Badge — and they’re members of the South Korean army.

Staff Sgts. Kim Min Kyoung and Kwon Min Zy are the first women, Korean or American, to earn the special-skills badge created in 1943.

“There were 21 soldiers from the (South Korean army’s) 21st Infantry Division that competed with them, pushing and pulling each other, helping each other out,” Kwon, 21, said through a translator.  [USA Today]

You can read more at the link, but the article is a bit misleading by making it appear these are the first women to pass the EIB test.  The US Army has for years allowed women to take the test:

Two Soldiers received special honors Friday during a ceremony at the Hilton Field Softball Complex recognizing those Soldiers who recently completed a week of tasks to earn the Expert Infantryman Badge.

Sgt. 1st Class Scott Wilkie, a drill sergeant with Company E, 3rd Battalion, 34th Infantry Regiment, was the only Soldier who received the “true blue” designation, meaning that he completed all the tasks without making any mistakes. Capt. Michelle Roberts, commander of Company F, 2nd Battalion, 60th Infantry Regiment, was the only female Soldier who passed the test.

Wilkie and Roberts were two of 42 Soldiers who passed from a field of 97 who began the testing.

“This is the first year that (I’ve seen) a (woman) compete in the 27 years I’ve been in the Army,” said Sgt. Maj. Michael Love, the noncommissioned officer in charge of the Expert Infantryman Badge, or EIB, testing. “I think it’s great.”

Roberts, an activated National Guard Soldier, said she believes it is her duty to be trained as well as possible in Soldiering skills, which is why she did not want to pass up the opportunity to go through the test and the two-week training in preparation for the EIB.  [Army.mil]

The problem that females that pass the EIB test have is that they are not in an infantry MOS, so they cannot wear the badge, but they receive the training certificate.  This is the same for non-infantry MOS males as well.  People have complained about this for years that the infantry branch are being badge protectors by not allowing other branches to wear the badge.  Since the ROK NCOs are in the infantry branch they get to wear the badge on their uniforms.  This seems very unfair to everyone else that has passed the testing that they cannot wear the badge, but foreign military personnel can.

This whole EIB testing gets back to my whole point of view on this that women should not be barred from any MOS or training as long as they meet the same established standards.  So did the ROK soldiers meet the same established standards as the US soldiers? According to this comment left on Facebook by an NCO claiming to have graded the testing, they did not:

If this claim is true and the ROK soldiers did not have to meet the same standards as US soldiers than this was nothing more than a PR stunt by 2ID.  The statistics may also give some indication that different standards were used.  According to the article only 18% of 2ID soldiers passed, but 18 of 21 (85%) of ROK soldiers passed the testing.  That is a big difference in percentages though the ROK Army likely sent 21 of their best soldiers.  Even if it was their best soldiers should the percentages be that skewed?  Anyway I would be interested to hear what others who may have been part of the EIB testing have to say about this issue.