For these young Korean conscripts, military service is no longer lost time

Many Korean men used to describe mandatory military service as a suffocating period spent confined to barracks, bound by rigid routines and largely disconnected from the outside world.

Conscription was widely seen as an involuntary pause in youth, rather than a continuation of the lives they had been building.

But for Woo Tae-hyun, his 18 months in the military were the exact opposite.

It was a strategically planned step toward his future goals.

Discharged last December, the 22-year-old, current ...