Women applying to become South Korean military officers top 20,000 a year

The number of women applying to become officers in South Korea's armed forces has passed 20,000 a year, according to recruitment data released on Sunday 25 October by Chun Ha-ram, a lawmaker from the minor Reform Party. Applications from women for officer posts rose from 11,057 in 2022 to 20,075 in 2025, an increase of 82 percent in three years, Yonhap News Agency reported.

Chun obtained the five-year figures on recruitment of female officers and non-commissioned leaders from the army, navy, air force, Marine Corps and the Korea Armed Forces Nursing Academy. Yonhap said the lawmaker had questioned army leaders days earlier, on 19 October, during the National Assembly defence committee's annual audit at the military headquarters complex in Gyeryong.

The army accounted for most of the growth. Female applicants for army officer posts climbed from 5,230 in 2022 to 12,820 last year, roughly two and a half times as many. The navy's figure rose from 1,370 to 1,770 over the same period, the air force's from 1,967 to 2,468, and the nursing academy's from 2,100 to 2,900, according to the data cited by Yonhap.

Two routes into the army officer corps saw especially sharp jumps. In 2025 about 5,800 women applied to the army's Reserve Officers' Training Corps programme and 3,280 to its course for university graduates, which Yonhap said were 2.5 times and 5.8 times the previous year's numbers.

Interest in the service academies also grew. The four academies run by the army, navy, air force and nursing corps received 9,817 applications from women in 2025, up 44 percent from 6,830 in 2022, according to figures reported by both Yonhap and the broadcaster YTN.

Because only a small number of places are open to women, the competition for each seat has become intense. Last year the Korea Military Academy, which trains army officers, drew 76.7 applicants for every place reserved for female cadets, up from 59.0 in 2021. The Naval Academy's ratio for women reached 60 to 1, the Air Force Academy's 53.3 to 1 and the nursing academy's 39 to 1, the reports said. Yonhap added that in this year's admissions round the Air Force Academy's ratio for female cadets rose further, to 61.4 to 1.

Chun argued that the figures show a large, unmet demand among women to serve. He said that more than 20,000 women a year are seeking to become officers and that female cadet ratios at the academies run into the dozens, and he urged the Ministry of National Defense not to ignore that demand but to look at a range of ways to give more women the chance to serve.

The reports did not include a response from the defence ministry or the individual services, and the data released by Chun did not show how many of the applicants were accepted. The figures cover applications only, so they measure interest in officer careers rather than changes in the actual number of women in uniform.