> More importantly, quitting would change the way I view and value myself. I wanted to see myself as someone who performed their fair share of service back to society, and not a parasite.
This is an insanely sad thing to read. You pay taxes, unless you're in an active war, you don't "owe" anything to the society.
Notwithstanding the military service being mandatory for really bad reasons, but if it's South Korea it's kinda not?
Saying the only way to 'owe' anything is through money sounds like a... weird Americanism to me (speaking as an American).
Ofc, caveat, if it's rich people deciding poor people have to do service, then yeah that's messed up. But kind of a separate issue.
In their defense, using taxes to pay others to do the work of maintaining/defending a nation allows better specialization of labor which can have its advantages. But it needs to be balanced with actual shared effort too, especially with things like national defense.