From a financial perspective, elite athletes facing the draft have more at stake than most, especially those in potentially lucrative sports like baseball and soccer. Multimillion-dollar contracts can hinge on whether they avoid the draft.

The Asian Games soccer final between South Korea and Japan drew special attention because it was the last chance for Son Heung-min, a star forward at the British club Tottenham Hotspur, to keep himself out of military barracks. Mr. Son, 26, had until next July to win an exemption, or he would have had to give up the Premier League for the army.

“It was as if people watched the match mainly to see if Son Heung-min could skip the military,” Koo Hyok-mo, a former army captain, said during a forum last month.

Athletes are not the only ones who can win draft exemptions; they are also granted to classical and traditional musicians who win certain awards. Pop singers have no such opportunity, even though K-pop is a global phenomenon. When members of well-known boy bands report for boot camp, crowds of female fans from across Asia often gather to bid them farewell.

“When I worked in Jordan as a volunteer taekwondo coach, I could see a K-pop craze there and how it was playing a big role in getting local people to like South Korea,” said Kang Tae-gyu, another South Korean who believes pop musicians should be eligible for exemptions.

But the recent backlash over the program has focused on the exemptions for athletes, which over the years seem to have been given out almost according to whim.

They were introduced in 1973 by the dictator Park Chung-hee, who was pushing for South Koreans to bring home medals in major sports — to distract the population from its dissatisfaction over his rule, in the view of some historians. A wrestler, Yang Jung-mo, was the first to receive an exemption, after winning gold in the 1976 Summer Olympics.