Appeals court-dead soldier Court recognizes trainee who died one day after joining military

DAEJEON, Aug. 12 (Yonhap) -- An appeals court on Friday recognized a trainee who died of heart disease one day after joining the military as "a person of national merit," making his bereaved family eligible for state aid funds and other welfare benefits. The Daejeon High Court ruled in favor of one of the dead trainee's parents, identified only as Yoo, who requested the court annul the Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs' decision not to grant the status to the son. Yoo's son died of a sudden heart attack the evening of April 7, 2009, while preparing dinner for his fellow recruits, just one day after he began his compulsory military service. A postmortem examination of his body found that he had cardiomyopathy, a disease that had gone undiagnosed before his death. Yoo filed a complaint against the chief of the ministry's regional branch office in Hongseong, some 150 kilometers south of Seoul, after the office rejected a request to list the dead son as a meritorious person. But a local court ruled against Yoo, saying that the death was caused by heart disease the deceased had prior to joining the military and thus not linked to his public service. Dismissing the lower court's ruling, Judge Shin Gyi-sup of the Daejeon High Court said, "The extreme stress that came in his first day in the military, which places a sudden constraint on one's lifestyle, may have worsened the disease." "If he had not died that day, he might have died later during his training," the judge said, adding, "It's unreasonable to establish a link between the death and how many days he worked." All able-bodied South Korean men are required to serve about two years of compulsory military service as the country is technically still at war with the North since the Korean War ended with an armistice in 1953, not a peace treaty. The chief of the Hongseong branch said he appealed against the high court ruling. pbr@yna.co.kr