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DoD approves more accompanied tours in Korea

Reasoning that North Korea now poses no more of a likely threat to the South than did the former Soviet Union to Western Europe during the Cold War, the Pentagon has decided to dramatically increase the number of duty tours in South Korea that include family members, and to lengthen most such tours from two to three years.

In addition, married troops will also be able to bring their spouses and children along for 2-year command-sponsored tours in two cities that lie between Seoul and the Demilitarized Zone that divides the two nations, and do not currently allow family accompaniment.

Standard unaccompanied tour lengths of 12 months would be unchanged for single troops.

Married service members, however, will have a choice. While the scope of the plans for each city will vary depending on the decisions of service leaders, these service members should be able to bring their families on a 2-year tour in Uijongbu and Dongducheon, three years in one of five other cities — or, choose to go alone to South Korea for 12 months.

The changes, signed Dec. 1 by Pentagon personnel chief David S.C. Chu and made public Wednesday, are subject to the adequacy of infrastructure, services and base support in each location.

The number of command sponsorship vacancies at each of seven locations will be jointly determined by Gen. Walter Sharp, commander of U.S. Forces Korea, and senior theater service representatives.

In the long term, U.S. officials plan to build more family support infrastructure, with financial aid from South Korea, as U.S. forces continue to consolidate and move south from camps established in the Korean War. The moves are part of a phased shift of primary military responsibility on the peninsula to the South Korean military, an effort slated for completion in 2012.

The first of the newly approved accompanied tours could begin this spring, said Bill Carr, deputy undersecretary of defense for military personnel policy.

The services’ implementation plans are due back to Chu by March 1, after which officials will set an implementation date.

Officials acknowledge that North Korea, which has exploded a nuclear device and claims it has developed nuclear warheads for missiles, remains the primary threat to security in Northeast Asia. And while Sharp argues that the U.S.-South Korea alliance would quickly defeat a North Korean assault, he says that such an attack “would cause huge damage.”

Yet while assignments to South Korea continue to be made “as though this remained an active combat zone, conflict is not imminent,” Gen. B.B. Bell, Sharp’s predecessor, told the House Armed Services Committee in March in arguing for a change in assignment policy.

Troops brought their families to Germany during the Cold War, which Bell said “created a stable military and sent a strong message of U.S. commitment and reliability to European allies.”

Allowing more families to live in South Korea with full U.S. support similarly “would send a powerful message to the nations of the area of America’s long-term commitment to security and stability in Northeast Asia.”

A change will also save money on the cost of more frequent relocations, he said.

USFK hopes to eventually build enough infrastructure, including more U.S. schools, to fully support its roughly 28,500 service members in country, with the expectation that at least 80 percent with families will opt for accompanied tours, according to Army Col. Jane Crichton, a USFK spokeswoman.

As of Dec. 4, there were 2,135 command-sponsored families living in South Korea. Such tours have always been limited, parsed out to selected billets in various locations, Crichton said.

Only three service members assigned north of Seoul in what are termed “key billets” are on accompanied tours; their spouses live in Seoul, Crichton said.

Another 1,909 non-command-sponsored U.S. families live in South Korea — families that have chosen the expense and, in many areas, lack of available U.S. facilities, over being separated from their service member for 12 months or longer.

This fall, in an initiative launched by Bell and overseen by Sharp, officials began to provide support for unaccompanied families in the Camp Red Cloud area in Uijongbu, granting limited housing allowances, a without-dependents cost-of-living allowance and Tricare Standard medical coverage.

Under the new policy, Pyeongtaek, Osan, Daegu, Chinhae and Seoul will transition from 24-month to 36-month accompanied tours. Uijongbu and Dongducheon, which currently offer no standard accompanied tours, will begin offering 24-month accompanied tours.

The shorter tours are an acknowledgement that the latter two areas do not offer the same level of U.S. services as Seoul and areas further south, Carr said.

If all goes as envisioned, married troops who come down on orders to South Korea would be directed to a secure Web site where they could review the facilities available at their future duty station and then choose a tour length, Carr said.

Officials also will gauge service members’ interest in serving shorter accompanied tours. Carr expects that the services will develop polls that will ask, after a service member decides to serve 12 months unaccompanied or 36 months accompanied in most locations, if their decision would have been different had they been offered a 24-month accompanied option.