Former Korean soldiers call out ARMYs for glamorizing their ‘military diet’

Okay ‘cause if another fandom did the same thing ARMYs are doing, they’d be one of the first ones to call them out for doing so.

It has been almost a month since BTS’ J-Hope had enlisted as an active duty soldier in Gangwon Province, South Korea, and ARMYs have been readily doing their best to cope by paying close attention to his military service.

Though, we’re not truly sure if that’s even allowed or whatnot, but okay.

One fan actually made a Twitter page named “HobisFoodTray,” which was inspired by another account highlighting BTS’ member Jin’s daily food menu and is where they post about J-Hope’s meals and diet during his service.

The fan in charge of the account gets the info by referring to the 36th Division barracks’ standard diet that’s published on the public data portal of the Ministry of National Defense. Afterwards, they edit a food tray with photos of the meal they would be having.

On May 7, 2023, the fan posted J-Hope’s dinner meal for the day: wheat rice, Sausage jiggae, stir-fried sundae tripe, stir-fried fish cake with red pepper, white kimchi, and Chapagetti.

ARMYs and other fans reacted positively and showered their support for the BTS member in the military, but it didn’t sit quite well with former soldiers. Male Koreans online argued that the photoshopped image was “far from reality” and wasn’t accurate at all.

 

Some of the comments included:

“It’s frustrating to see photoshopped images of high-quality food on Twitter when, in reality, the military serves low-quality meals.”

“I’d like to serve the person promoting these photos the military food I used to eat.”

“They clearly haven’t experienced real military food; if they had, they wouldn’t be able to create such misleading images.”

While some Korean men were rightfully angry about this, some also suggested to the fan that they share more authentic images of military meals instead, as it could put the spotlight towards the meal quality for Korean soldiers and grab international awareness over it. The fan handling the HobisFoodTray account also hoped that there wouldn’t be any misunderstandings regarding their posts.

J-Hope is scheduled to be deployed to his own unit at the end of May, after completing 5 weeks of basic military training in his training center in Gangwon-do.

 

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