North Korea ropes in women for compulsory military service

#northkoreawomen #militaryservice Military service would be compulsory for young women of North Korea as reported in theguardian.com dated 31 January 2015 – it would apply to all women between 17 and 20, and the decision has been handed down to mobilization offices in each province, city, and county and it has already been implemented.
The reason for making military service mandatory for young women is believed to be a bid to strengthen the nation’s armed forces. It will apply to all women who have graduated from middle and high school. They have to undergo mandatory military service.
Every woman would be screened and these screenings would look for physical problems or contagious diseases. The minimum height requirement for women to serve had been lowered to 142cm in 2012, but as reports indicate, this rule is not strictly enforced. While men have to serve mandatorily for 10 years, the women would serve only up to the age of 23.
This action of the military to recruit women is seen as an effort to make up the shortfall in troop numbers because of the high child mortality rate coupled with low birth rate stemming from the Arduous March which was the name given to the North Korean famine in the 1990s.