In South Korea, men over 19 are in principle required to serve in the military for 24 months. For most South Korean young men, the military service is an unavoidable duty as they must suspend their studies in colleges or quit jobs. But men who served in military could get additional 3% to 5% points on top of their original scores. The Support for Discharged Soldiers Act Article 8 (extra points in hiring examination) prescribed "when job protection agencies conduct hiring examinations, veterans receive up to 5% points of the full score as extra points in each subject tested in the written examination as determined by presidential decrees." In 1999, the constitutional court ruled against the Act to give additional points to discharged soldiers when they take state-run exams to become public officials. The constitutional court decided that the measure is unjust and breaches the equal rights status of women and the disabled who are not obliged to serve in the military. In equality review, the veterans' extra point system is differential treatment in the area of 'labor' or 'employment', where the Constitution specially demands equality in its Article 32 (4), and causes a great burden on the Article 25 right to hold public offices, and is therefore reviewed under a strict standard of review.
Veterans may need be supported through various social policies, but not by depriving other groups in the community of equal opportunity. The veterans' extra point system is an unfinanced attempt to support veterans that ends up shifting burdens to the social weak such as women and the handicapped. Our Constitution abides by various international treaties, and stands for substantive equality and a social state, the ideals further manifested in our legal system. The veterans' extra point system violates the basic order firmly established in our legal system, namely, 'anti-discrimination and protection of women and the handicapped', and therefore loses the requisite appropriateness and reasonableness as the means of policy implementation. Recently a bill to revive an incentive system for discharged soldiers has introduced and reignited a controversy over the issue.