While Si Woo Kim was just proving himself to be a successful PGA Tour golfer, it now appears that the young South Korean will have to face the possibility of a two-year military commitment. Kim is from South Korea, which calls all males age 18-to-28 to serve and complete their duty.

Si Woo Kim Was Asked About His Upcoming Service After a Recent Win

In an interview following his win on Sunday, Si Woo Kim was asked to share his thoughts about the possibility of this life-pausing moment. The 25-year-old professional golfer said that while he hasn’t done the service yet, he is certainly planning on doing it as a Korean. He added that he is not sure when he will have the chance to serve.

Five Years Ago, South Korea Declined Professional Golfer Sang-moon Bae’s Waiver Request

South Korea is known to be unwavering when it comes to this obligation. Back in 2015, the country’s Military Manpower Association rejected a waiver from Sang-moon Bae, who was the winner of the PGA Tour and the Presidents Cup member. Bae could not avoid service and fulfilled his responsibility in the next two years. However, his game hasn’t been the same ever since.

Still, there are exceptions from time to time, and current regulations say that athletes who win Olympic medals or gold medals in the Asian Games will be granted military service exemptions. This would not apply for Si Woo Kim, though, because the Asian Games are for amateurs only, and it looks like the Tokyo Olympic games will be canceled. When asked about his thoughts on that possibility, Kim replied that while he wished he could have that benefit, he had already decided that he had to go to serve and would do it regardless of the circumstances.

Si Woo Kim plays on the PGA Tour and has an impressive resume. At 25, Kim has earned his third career victory at American Express. His other two victories were at the 2016 Wyndham Championship and 2017 Players Championship. Kim had a strong bounce-back campaign after last year’s mediocre season.

The large radio telescope at Parkes Observatory in Australia picked up an interesting radio frequency in 2019. As the scientists reviewed the archival data from that year, this one transmission caught their attention. While many alien hunters around the world would readily take this as a sign of extraterrestrial communication, plenty of research is yet to be done to determine the source and cause of this signal.

About Proxima Centauri

The radio transmission that the telescope picked up is suspected to have come from Proxima Centauri. This is the closest star system to our own, located 4.2 lightyears away. The red dwarf star at the center of the system is too dim to be visible by the naked eye from Earth. It is, however, orbited by two planets, Proxima B, and Proxima C. The first planet has an 11-day orbit and resides in the star’s “habitable zone.”

The Transmission Is Not Complex

The radio transmission was discovered by a project called Breakthrough Listen that’s led by Andrew Siemion from the University of California, Berkeley. During a stellar-flare study, astronomers used the Parkes satellite to observe Proxima Centauri for 26 hours. While analyzing the recovered data, intern Shane Smith found a strange narrowband emission. At 982.002 megahertz, the transmission is one sharp note that drifts slightly in frequency. However, it carries no modulations as if to convey information. Subsequent research of the signal is being helmed by Sofia Sheikh from Penn State University.

Should Alien Hunters Get Excited

Siemion explains that the radio spectrum this signal encompasses is typically not used by human-made spacecraft or satellites. Additionally, he says that we are unaware of natural ways to compress electromagnetic energy into a single frequency bin. However, scientists will continue implementing tests to rule out terrestrial interference and natural cosmic sources. Scientists hope that more conclusive information will be obtained through research of the signal in the following months so it’s still early for alien hunters to get their hopes up.