Food Waste Episode 1: JJAM

A photo of food waste from the military

Inside the military, a lot of slang words exist. Today, I am going to introduce one of the most used slang words inside this group, which is “JJAM,” which basically stands for food waste. JJAM, however, has more meaning than that. It also refers to a soldier's length of service or seniority in the military hierarchy. It’s not about official rank but rather how long someone has served, especially within the same unit or branch. Soldiers with more "jjam" are often given informal authority or privileges over those with less, regardless of actual rank. This meaning, in fact, is based on the meaning of food waste, since more experienced, higher-ranking soldiers probably saw and ate more JJAM than others.

(When it is applied in a sentence, I could say, “Even though we're the same rank, he treats me like a newbie because his JJAM is higher.”)

It might seem funny and make no sense at first, but sometimes it’s really important to comprehend this notion, because if you don’t, especially in the Korean military, you might end up doing something that lower-ranking or less experienced soldiers aren't allowed to do.

For instance, someone with a higher rank, who has a lot of JJAM, might be okay to smoke wherever they want because they know there is no one to say something in that base. While someone who has less JJAM did the same thing, this is a serious problem. Any people who witnessed it and have more JJAM than he will probably chew him out all day. When someone behaves in a way beyond their experience, we say they have no JJAM awareness, and someone with low JJAM we call JJAM-JJI. Funny, right? I thought it was fun too, but when you are in that position, being scolded and roasted all day, it is not funny at all, trust me. It was one of the worst experiences I've had.(For the record, I don’t smoke—this is hypothetical. I tried it once after a superior with significantly more JJAM than me practically ordered me to.)

However, today my main topic is about food waste, the main meaning of JJAM. As you might notice, the amount of food waste in the military is tremendously large; they even made a slang word for it.

 Inside the military, everything from cleaning to repairing facilities is done by soldiers like us. The people who have lower JJAM do the harder and more labor-intensive work, which also includes washing dishes and cleaning all the food waste. When I first got to the base, it felt like the day was built around cleaning the cafeteria. Right after breakfast, we didn’t get a break. We’d get up, clear the trays, wipe down tables, sweep floors, and take out trash.

By the time we finished, it was already time for lunch. Sometimes it felt like we were just resetting the same space again and again. That cafeteria became our whole day.

 This routine lasted for several weeks and ended when I was promoted to the next level and when more recruits joined. While I was cleaning, food waste filled 2 to 3 oil barrels every single day. Think about filling those barrels every day. I still remember how far we had to wheel those heavy barrels of leftover food to the disposal site—so heavy that it often took four of us just to push one cart.

Yet this daily struggle is just a small part of a much larger problem: every year, the Korean military generates roughly 4 million tons of food waste, amounting to about 15% of all meals prepared—some 80 times more per capita than that of civilian households, at an annual economic cost of around ₩150 billion. This excessive waste stems from unpredictable headcounts (due to vacations and overnight passes), inconsistent seasoning or unappetizing dishes, and difficulty portioning liquid-based menus like soups and stews.

Several bases have begun data-driven cooking forecasts—AI-powered serving-and-waste-monitoring systems. Although these innovations show promise in reducing leftovers, they remain limited to only a few units due to their high cost and inefficiency in resource allocation.

When military cafeterias dispose of leftover food, fresher waste is often reused as animal feed or composted in oxygen-rich facilities. In contrast, salty or spoiled food is usually burned or sent to landfills. There, without oxygen, bacteria break down the waste and release methane (CH₄) and carbon dioxide (CO₂). Because methane traps about 25 times more heat than CO₂ over a 100-year period, even small amounts of landfilled food can have a surprisingly large impact on the climate.

Rainwater seeping through the buried waste creates leachate—a polluted liquid high in organic matter (measured as chemical and biological oxygen demand), ammonia, phosphates, dissolved salts, and sometimes trace metals. If this leachate escapes the landfill lining, it can deplete oxygen in nearby streams, killing fish and encouraging algal blooms, and can also contaminate groundwater.

In hot weather, even worse, microbial activity speeds up: the waste decomposes faster, producing volatile fatty acids and ammonia that generate foul odors and draw flies, rodents, and other pests, undermining hygiene and troop health. And every stage of meal prep and cleanup—from cooking and serving to hauling and processing the waste—consumes water, electricity, and fuel, adding to the overall environmental cost.

However, implementing overly radical policies could lead to unintended consequences, such as a shortage of drinking water or a decline in soldiers' morale. In a country that enforces conscription, the treatment of soldiers is a highly sensitive matter, so attempting to solve problems too aggressively is likely to backfire. That’s why we shouldn’t approach the issue of food waste with the mindset of “Just reduce it and be done with it.” After researching and collecting data for this essay, I was eager to at least solve this problem in our base. After discussing the issue with my peers and several officers on base, we set up a rotation for serving meals and worked with the cooks to adjust portion sizes, which allowed us to implement strict, detailed supervision of the cafeteria to minimize leftover food. 

In practice, this turned out to be a major challenge: the headcount could swing from ten to twenty diners at each serving, and managing those shifting numbers requires huge oversight. Although we’ve significantly reduced the amount of food waste, we’ve also spent a great deal of time discussing and fine-tuning our approach. The moment we let our guard down for even a single day, the volume of leftovers spikes again. I truly hope there’s a way to solve this ironic and frustrating situation.