Korea Duty Assignments Extended
Single soldiers will get two-year assignments instead of the typical 12-month tour; Soldiers with families will get three years vice two.
Longer assignments coming soon for troops heading to South Korea
By Karen Jowers
A new Pentagon directive implementing longer tours of duty in South Korea will improve force stability, support service members’ quality of life and enhance readiness in the face of regional threats, U.S. Forces Korea officials said
The directive, announced Tuesday, extends tours for unaccompanied service members assigned to South Korea from 12 months to 24 months.
The policy takes effect Oct. 1, 2025, and applies to all service members receiving orders on or after that date, though implementation timelines may vary by service branch, officials said. The directive follows a February announcement that extended tours for military families moving to South Korea from 24 months to 36 months.
Currently, there are roughly 28,500 military personnel stationed in South Korea, with the Army having the largest contingent of permanent party personnel there, at about 14,000 personnel.
For more than a decade, officials have discussed extending tour lengths in South Korea. Air Force Col. William Parker, director of personnel for U.S. Forces Korea, described the change in tour lengths as a “tour normalization policy.”
“Tour Normalization” smacks of buzzword bingo, like “Right Sizing” was back in the day. Translation- cheaper to keep ’em in-country longer and it is in line with other overseas postings, but don’t sugarcoat it. Thanks to one of our Usual Suspects for the links.
Category: Big Pentagon, Guest Link, Korea, Usual Suspects
Let me just drop this here from my comment of book of faces.
1. The Juicy girls will assist in repelling any attack.
2. Ya’ all are just worried about your stripes. I say FUCK EM!!! Why fight the inevitable?
3. You’re welcome in advance.
https://spoonuniversity.com/school/nyu/a-definitive-ranking-of-the-best-soju-flavors/
….This may not go over well.
…like a turd in a punch bowl.
Its like winning the lottery. 1st prize is one year in Korea. Second prize is two years in Korea.
But there are prizes, so there’s that.
I don’t know where they are going to put that family housing on Camp Casey, nothing but barracks and motorpools. I guess they could bulldoze the golf course on Casey.
Going through the Korean winter once was bad enough, can’t imagine having to do it twice.
We had two or three NCOs and one Joe that had their wife and kids with them on their own dime. I remember the one alert we had where they ran through the whole simulated dependent evacuation plan, had them all at the gym by the PX on Casey. My training NCO said it was a nut roll and they would all be dead before they could have been evacuated South, imagine a whole companies worth of wives and children.
Since it’s a 2/3 year tour, do all the Joes get to bring their car? Yeah, that would work out great, definitely no chance of DUIs.
Saw a few guys sign that Dec-Statement and eat the bar to reenlist when they got orders for Korea, sure the rate at which that happens won’t go up.
When I arrived in Korea, I had 16-17 months left on my contract, just shy of the 6 months needed to rotate back. No way in hell I would have extended/re upped to meet a 2 year assignment.
9/11 over there was fun. Found out many unaccompanied folk in unit were married and 1. Had brought their family from the States or 2. Had married folk there. Surprise! NEO prep was a trip.
I’m sure I’ve shared my “almost went” story here a time or two, but in Spring 2005 I came down on orders to Korea. I’d just arrived in The Old Guard the previous fall, but my PCS date wasn’t fixed, so while my records showed I moved from Campbell to McNair. They also showed I hadn’t PCSed in over three years. TOG had a lot of guys hiding out, reenlisting for station stabilization or just getting out if they couldn’t stay in the Regiment, so Big Army had decided to make sure they got they time in FORSCOM.
Anyway, I made the most of it. Figured I’d be getting DC BAH while my family continued living in Richmond. I contacted the JSA CSM and found an E-5 slot was opening right before my report date, so that was about locked in. We had a guy come to my squad in Baghdad who’d been with JSA and it sounded different… better than 2ID (which was starting to rotate in Iraq anyway–a few Rakkasans got the ’02 Afghanistan/’03 Iraq treatment, reenlisted for Korea in ’04, and found themselves back in Iraq later that year).
My 1SG found out about the error, talked to the TOG CSM, and my orders got pulled. My three years in TOG turned into four when I tried reupping for Hawaii and found myself fenced in. Then, my aspirations of becoming a Drill Sergeant to move elsewhere were shelved when I was DA Select for Recruiter instead. Hopes of broadening myself as a New Age 11B (11D and 11H were nixed just before I joined) by volunteering for 3ID saw me placed in the Light Infantry Brigade instead of Mech, then the Army played another joke by selecting me for Drill Sergeant as a worn-out and cynical senior SSG (nothing to brag about, but outside of the pay increase, I almost hated to lose my seniority to become a new SFC doing the same jobs).
The end, back to hauling money on what was a day off a few hours ago. It’s all overtime since 0930, though.
God has a sense of humor! Just tell him your plans.
Two tours, five TDY missions in Korea. I’d still go.
It was fun back in the day (88-90, 99-00) but I’ll pass.
I was there in 88-90. Was told all the “Steam & Creams” were just discontinued due to wives’ complaints. Imagine that.
I heard they were recently closed, but because the CP Humphreys chaplain got a happy ending.
I was there 07-08. Saw all I wanted to in Korea and have no interest in returning.
Computer-aided distilling and brewing has made local alcohol better and cheaper. (Soju is no longer godawful.) Koreans are less tolerant of their own folk openly doing “Me love you long time!” stuff (the ‘ville outside Humphreys ain’t Itaewon with Hooker Hill, they’re not letting that develop). They also banned eatin’ dog (no more Kagogi, folks).
Keikogi supposedly went away with the ’88 olympics. Nah, it just went further underground.
Keikogo went over the water to Chejudo in 1989. I saw a group chasing a dog down the beach …. thinking they were playing with their pet. When I walked back to Camp McNab 30 minutes later I saw them burning the hair off the now dead dog!
I always wondered if it was some resident’s pet … now missing …. now filling up the bellies of hungry beach-goers.
Were you in Korea, or Pennsylvania watching Dominican immigrants?
Pennsylvania lately…
Yup, I’ve seen similar things! And we talked about Chejudo once. I was there Thanksgiving of ‘89.
Maybe it was ‘88. I was drunk those years.
The ‘ville outside Humphreys was rockin’ 88-90. Smaller than Itaewon or Songtan but still plenty of dumbassery to go around. I admit nothing, call my lawer.
Songtan in 2022… not what I saw doing Courtesy Patrol in 2001- 02:
Last time I saw Songtan was 2000, a far cry from what it was in 1990. That pedestrian area didn’t exist in 1990 and it was crazy busy. Almost got squished in front of the Stereo Club.
How come we don’t have the same deal with Viet of the Nam?
Hell, my Hanes underwear is made there.
I can just see China Beach in DaNang with a ferris wheel.
And a golf course.
With the funnel cake stall right next to the grilled cobra cart 🤣
A few notes about Korea from a squid that has NEVER been to Korea. Korea sucks…from what I’ve been told.
I have 2 Army friends that did time in ROK, and one friend used that term because it was like a prison. He was an 11B and there during the first Gulf War. He essentially hated every minute he was there. My other friend was MP at the DMZ. He was inexperienced with females, and he ended up bringing back a Korean wife to the disapproval of his parents. Most of us thought she was a “working girl” and she was at least 10 older than him despite never saying her age. She was just said she was “Robby’s age”.
Every picture that anyone ever showed me from their time in Korea was guys sitting in a barracks/dorm or apartment with a pile of beer cans in some sort shape behind them like a pyramid. Granted, almost every guy’s pic from their service shows beer consumption, but I’m talking cases upon cases of empties stacked on top of each other. Either it was too fucking hot/cold/crowded/expensive to do any but drink beers from the PX.
My friend’s marriage lasted 4 years, and she divorced him for another US Service member she met a stateside church where the ENTIRE congregation was Americans married to Koreans. Every single one. He re-married and is doing fine, so I guess it worked out.
Yes, a social drinker there would be considered for Track 3 ASAP anywhere else. (Folk got upset when the shelf limit for beer got cut from a case a day to a case a week.)
Sending FNGs to Korea is just asking for trouble. ROKs don’t DEROS, have life experience before going, human nature is the same as it’s always been.
Oh, it doesn’t suck all the time. I had a blast.
I was 11B as well.
I should talk about the Argentinian dancer that worked in their embassy I met in Seoul, but I better not. 😎. But that is only one story of 16 months.
It was what we made of it.
When did the unaccompanied tours get reduced to 12 months? It was 24 months as late as ’95.
It was 12 months in 1989-90 when I was there.
365 and wake-up like ‘Nam!
May 94-95, 12 months and I had to reup or do 17 months. PCSed to Hood, and spent more time in the field my first year there than I did during my year in Korea.
Let’s face it, on a one year tour, much of the first month and the last month are worthless for unit readiness.
The first month is in-processing, drawing TA-50, getting introduced into a unit, and learning where your bunk is, the mess hall, the gym. Depending on the season, and where the soldier PCS’d from, there will be weather acclimatation to heat or snow. Then the soldier has to learn the names of his team, squad, platoon, etc., half of which will change during his tour.
The last month is a rush of getting new orders, clearing post, turning in equipment, etc.
I did a 13 month* tour June 1974 – July 1975 (Camp Hovey, C Co, 1/38th Infantry, 2nd ID) and that was my experience. So a two year tour sounds like a much needed improvement.
*It was supposed to be a 12 month tour (June to June) , but Uncle Sam ran out of PCS funds and we had to wait until the new fiscal year began (then July 1 of each year) so the new appropriations would be available.
Fuck this noise!
Sounds like it ain’t a hardship posting anymore.
Depends, can you get Heineken or anything decent in the PX?
Fishing any good?
In 85 you could get high on morning runs from the cheap beer and soju fumes. One gu showed up in jeans, drunk as hell, did pt, 1SG called him a hero, and took no action
“Single soldiers will get two-year assignments instead of the typical 12-month tour; Soldiers with families (I’m assuming “accompanied”?) will get three years vice two.”
Soooo…..I was over there 85-86,12 mo/1 year as a MARRIED UNACCOMPANIED.
Where does THIS fit into the Good Idea Fairy nightmare?
Try sending a “soldier with family” overseas unaccompanied for a THREE YEAR TOUR?
Or would MARRIED UNACCOMPANIED be considered “Single”? Same applies. Separate a family for TWO FUCKING YEARS? W-T-A-F!?!?
At the time, there were very few GIs that had their families over there with them, and for good reason.
1-It was too damned close to a possible war zone (DMZ).
2-There were not enough facilities (at the time) to handle a shitload slew of families – PX, medical, schools, housing…..
Did that change over the last 40 years? How many Koreans did Uncle Sam displace to make room for US GI families?
That old saying holds true, if the military wanted you to have a family, they would have issued you one.
And the one they issued you would be old, used, and non DX-able
Ask the Marines what it’s like on Okinawa:
As for me, I was there 92-93 in the 2ID Western corridor, a 12-month unaccompanied tour, but hey, I was just a wet-behind-the-ears Joe fresh out of basic & AIT. the first week was at the “Turtle farm” there at Camp Casey and during that tour they gave 4P3 Firebase to the ROKs, deactivated 1/4FA and move 2ID Division HQ to Camp Red Cloud, which I hear no longer exists either! I’ve even heard that we no longer occupy Yongsan as well and Itaewon is no longer the party place it was then. Half of my tour there was out in the field where we heard the commie’s loudspeakers 24/7 and, in the rear, you had your Liberty Pass which meant you could go anywhere within 2 klicks of Camp unless you pissed the 1SG off and got that taken, but on weekends, a number of lucky souls got a Liberty pass which entitled them to go anywhere in the ROK they wanted to until the expiration time. Everyone had fun as they got short over there, calling everyone with more time left than them “Turtles”, ahh what I got away with back then, …
Yongsan been given back to the ROKs. We retain an enclave with the Dragon Hill Lodge and State Dept housing. Even so, outside Humphreys still ain’t Itaewon; ROKs personally didn’t like CFC moving down there.
When I left Udon in 75, they offered to send me to Korea. I decided to go back to the states. Sounds like I made the right choice in hind sight.
My 1st Shirt at Yokota (Japan for those scoring at home) did 8 years at Tachikawa (again Japan), 1 year in Thailand, then 8 years at Yokota with multiple TDY’s to Korea. The General said anyone who wanted to extend past 5 years in Japan had to see him personally and plead their cases to extend. With 17 years in a row stationed in Asia, he had no case to plead so he DERO’sed. They sent him to Europe.
Some folks can’t get enough of overseas duty.
In the early ’80’s the Air Force decided that career bachelors would serve the same length tours as the GI’s who served accompanied tours – anything to save a buck. I know one career bachelor who served OCUNUS at the same base for so many years the townsfolk appointed him deputy mayor.
When I decided to retire from active duty my AFSC was being phased out (temporarily it turned out – We’re back) so the numbers were down and no one was making E-8. I was also number one on the list to go to Korea. I said I’d been there, send me somewhere else. Randolph said no, so I told them I’d go somewhere else to not get promoted. Randolph said you know what you have to do, so I said, “Okay, bye!”
HAHAHA 😂 – two year tours for “single Soldiers”, won’t see many single Soldiers returning to the states!!!
Damn it!!
How bad do you have to F up or how low do your line scores have to be to get 2,,,,,TWO,,,,,,2 years in Korea.
Don’t get me wrong, some great memories and good times,,, BUT 2 YEARS!!!!! I say again ,, Damn it!!!
Did 6 years at Ft Drum when 10th Mtn activated. Talked to Retention branch about going to Ft Lewis to finish out 24 years service so they sent me to 2ID at Camp Casey with follow-on to Lewis. Got to Casey and moved into a fenced-in compound within Camp Casey near CIF and the golf course, occupied by only 6 of us.
A plus was I had a quonset hut by myself and having our own gate guards (Korean) that knew each of us by sight as they also occupied the compound. A negative was rats living in the walls of the quonset huts.
Come time to PCS back to Conus branch sent me and my wife to Ft Ord for 9 months until it closed before getting to Ft Lewis.
I did 16 months straight (took no leave) since I did not have the 6 months needed to PCS back to the states.
Started at Camp Greaves for 4 months (1/506) then down to Casey for another 12 months (2X).
I was lucky enough to see most of the country given my job.
I actually had a blast there as an 11B 🙂 . It is what you make of it I suppose.
That’s unnecessary.
Never was in K, Ro, but I’d presume at 2 years there’d be intermittent block leave.
I did a few flights backfourth to CT from HI, and even as an in shape, responsible Soldier (often arriving back two days early to hydrate and readjust), those flights were hell.
I swear every hour of time in a pressurized cylinder at 35k feet requires 2 of recovery. Not to mention the fucking cost… speaking of, how is this helping save money and not hurting retention?