Civil-Military Joint Advisory Committee Recommends Rapid Introduction of RFID System for Military Firearms

Paradigm Shift in Preventing Fatal Incidents:
From Post-Incident Management to "Resilience Enhancement"

The military is shifting its suicide prevention paradigm from "post-incident management" to "resilience enhancement." This change is being made because there are inherent limitations in identifying and managing only high-risk personnel, and the policy focus should move toward strengthening the psychological resilience of individual service members.

The Civil-Military Joint Special Advisory Committee for Overcoming Internal Strife and Designing Future National Defense, specifically the Subcommittee on Countermeasures for Military Deaths (chaired by Professor Park Chanwoon of Hanyang University), announced on January 21 that it had adopted a comprehensive set of recommendations based on ten agenda discussions and field visits to military units.

Yonhap News Agency

First, the subcommittee recommended that it is necessary to strengthen the psychological resilience of each service member to prevent suicide incidents. In particular, it proposed enhancing a civilian-cooperation-based mental health care support system and improving living conditions to aid in the physical and mental recovery of service members. Additional recommendations included: ▲ enhancing the effectiveness of military life counselors ▲ improving the effectiveness of suicide prevention education ▲ introducing a mental training (fitness) program for the armed forces.

The subcommittee stated, "Given the nature of military organizations, it is impossible to completely eliminate stress, but by strengthening psychological resilience, most stress can be overcome. Visiting a psychiatrist should be as routine as visiting an internist, and the living environment in military units should be improved to meet societal standards as much as possible to reduce stress."

Regarding safety accident prevention, the subcommittee clarified the need for technical responses to prevent the recurrence of firearm-related incidents. It recommended the rapid introduction of an RFID-based management system that can track the movement and location of firearms in real time, to address the limitations of the current management method, which relies heavily on human oversight.

In the field of emergency medical care, the principle of "action first, report later" was clearly emphasized, along with the plan to develop the Armed Forces Trauma Center into a world-class trauma treatment hub. For the response system after fatal accidents, transparency and restoring the trust of bereaved families were presented as the highest priorities. The Ministry of National Defense stated, "Based on the comprehensive recommendations, we will do our utmost to ensure that the rights of service members are protected and that the military earns the trust of the public."