B. The Military
Lack of Convenience Facilities for Female Military Personnel
We concluded that it was a violation of the victim's personal rights guaranteed in Article
10 of the Constitution for the battalion commander and command sergeant major to fail to
provide convenience facilities such as restrooms for one female soldier serving in the unit and
to take vindictive measures against her when she filed a complaint to them. On January 24, we
recommended that the Minister of National Defense, etc., come up with improvement measures
after identifying difficulties encountered by female soldiers, such as those relating to their
physiological needs and accommodation arrangements during field training exercises, to ensure
that all gender equality centers in the military function normally and to issue a warning to the
petitionees.
The petitioner submitted the petition on the grounds that the victim suffered from the lack of
a female restroom due to the military unit's failure to repair them, had to ask male soldiers for
the key to the female restroom each time, and sometimes had no choice but to use a container as
a latrine. Also, the command sergeant major, etc., deliberately excluded the victim from group
events, forced the victim to use the restroom of another military unit located 1.6 kilometers
away during ranger training after turning the on-site female restroom into a male restroom, and
threatened and took retaliatory acts when the victim filed a complaint to them.
Notification of Disciplinary Action Taken to a Third Person against Soldiers' Will
On November 9, we recommended that the commander of the respective Division provide
on-the-job education to the petitionee for notifying the petitioners' parents against the petitioners'
will that they were put into a military guardhouse.
The petitioners were submitted to disciplinary action of confinement in a guardhouse for
violating their duty to maintain dignity as soldiers. However, although they expressed their
will against the notification of the execution of the disciplinary action through their legal
representatives, the petitionee notified this fact to their parents. As such, they submitted a
petition for the violation of privacy and freedom.
The proviso of Article 59-2 (6) of the Military Personnel Management Act and Article 8 of
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Commission's Major Activities