Category: USFK

“A Profile” is a continuing series of articles here on the ROK Drop that describes each of the different US military installations in Korea and the corresponding “villes” outside of the gate.  You can learn more about these locations at the below links:

• Bosandong Ville In Donguducheon (2011)
• Camp Bosan AKA TDC Ville (2025)
• Camps Casey, Hovey, Nimble, Mobile, Castle, & Kwangsa-ri
• Camps Kyle, Sears, Essayons, LaGuardia, & Falling Water
• Camp Kyle & Camp Sears (2020)
• Camp Casey (2025)
• Camp Mobile
• Camp Mujuk
• Camp Page
• Camp Red Cloud (2005)
• Camp Stanley
• Korea Training Center (KTC)
• The “TDC Ville” (2007)
• Teokgeo-ri Ville
• Uijeongbu
• Western Corridor Camps
• Western Korean Demilitarized Zone
• Yongsan Garrison, Camp Kim, Camp Coiner, Camp Jackson & Camp Market

Note: If anyone wants to contribute an article to this series feel free to send it to me using the “Contact” link above.  If it is of high enough quality I will publish it here on the ROK Drop.  I would particularly like to publish articles about camps that are now closed.  If you have served on a now closed camp and would like to share your thoughts and pictures of your time on the camp please write an article and send it to me or post it in the Forums.

Here is an article that talks how much former 8th Army Commander LTG Campbell appreciated his time in Korea:

Late former 8th U.S. Army commander Charles Campbell considered it one of his greatest honors that he was given a Korean name meaning defender of Korea while serving with the Asian ally, his family said Friday.

Campbell, who commanded the 8th Army from 2002 to 2006, died Feb. 8 of an illness at age 68.

“General Campbell often commented that one of his greatest honors was when the South Korea-U.S. Alliance Friendship Group gifted him with the name ‘Kim, Han-su,’” his family said in an obituary carried by the Shreveport Times and other local media.

“His Korean name means ‘the great defender and protector of Korean freedom and peace.’ General Campbell reserved a special place in his heart for the people of South Korea and especially General Paik Sun-yup, South Korea’s greatest hero of the Korean War,” the family said.

Paik, the South Korean Army’s first four-star general, provided Campbell “with guidance and counsel that was invaluable to him during his many commands in Korea,” the obituary said.

Campbell’s memorial service is scheduled for Feb. 22 at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Shreveport. [Korea Times]

Via a reader tip comes this sad news that the former Eighth Army Commander General Charles Campbell has passed away from an undisclosed illness:

Former Eighth Army and Army Forces Command chief Gen. (retired) Charles C. “Hondo” Campbell died Monday after a lengthy illness, according to The Times, his hometown newspaper in Shreveport, La.

Campbell, 68, was the Army’s last continuously serving officer who had seen action in the Vietnam War, according to an Army statement released at the time of his retirement in 2010.

“When I went to Vietnam, we had more than 500,000 soldiers in Vietnam (alone),” Campbell said in the statement.

There are fewer active-duty soldiers than that in the entire Army today with plans to cut troop strength to 450,000 by the end of 2017.

During his service, Campbell saw the Army’s transition to an all-volunteer force, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the counterinsurgency campaigns that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

He spent his final four years in uniform as chief of Forces Command, overseeing all continental U.S.-based conventional operating forces.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more about General Campbell at the link, but my condolences go out to his family and friends.

https://twitter.com/pearswick/status/691196779757330433

North Korea’s demands for a peace treaty and a stop to military drills would essentially mean the end of the US-ROK alliance in return for no more nuclear tests.  Notice the North Koreans are only saying they would end nuclear tests, not stop their nuclear program or dismantle the bombs they already have:

North Korea said it could stop its nuclear tests in exchange for signing a peace treaty with the U.S. and a stop to annual military exercises between the U.S. and South Korea.

The North’s statement carried by the state media late Friday was a repeat of past offers that have been rejected by the U.S., which wants Pyongyang to commit to a complete abandonment of nuclear weapons.

An unnamed spokesman of the North’s Foreign Ministry called the purported hydrogen bomb test on Jan. 6 a justifiable move to ensure its survival against external threats.  [Korea Times]

You can read the rest at the link.

While the investigation into why an inert TOW missile that hit a Korean civilian shed continues, Rodriguez Range will reopen for training:

Training resumed Saturday at Rodriguez Live Fire Range in South Korea, though restrictions introduced after a missile went astray last month will remain in place for the time being.

A tube-launched, optically tracked, wire-guided (TOW) anti-tank missile fired Dec. 30 by U.S. Marines landed 200 meters outside the range boundary in an abandoned building within Pocheon city limits. An investigation into the incident is ongoing, said Col. David Patterson Jr., 8th Army spokesman.

“We will not fire the munition involved in the … incident on [Rodriguez Range] until the joint investigation is completed,” he said.

The safety of Pocheon residents remains a top concern of the command, Patterson said.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link.

Congratulations to General Scaparrotti if the below report is true.  This is pretty impressive that he is going from one very important four-star command to take over another one as the head of NATO.  I can’t remember the last USFK commander that moved on to such a prestigious position after leaving their post in Korea:

Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, the commander of the U.S. Forces Korea, will probably be promoted to head NATO Forces.

The Wall Street Journal on Thursday said U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter is to recommend to President Barack Obama that Scaparrotti become the next commander of U.S. European Command.

Scaparrotti will serve concurrently as the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, or the head of NATO forces. He assumed command of the USFK in August 2013.  [Chosun Ilbo]

Another ordinance round landing outside the limits of Rodriguez Range is the last thing USFK needed to happen at the increasingly controversial firing range.  It will be interesting to see if the investigation results will be released because it would helpful to know if this was human error or a problem with the TOW missile?  Regardless activists will undoubtedly jump on this in their effort to get paid:

The U.S. military has suspended training at the Rodriguez Live Fire Range in South Korea after a stray missile struck a nearby building.

No one was injured in the Wednesday incident, which is under investigation, 8th Army spokesman Col. David Patterson Jr. said Thursday.

The tube-launched, optically tracked, wire-guided (TOW) anti-tank missile was fired by Marines training at the range, 2nd Infantry Division spokesman Lt. Col. Richard Hyde said. It landed 200 meters outside the range boundary in an abandoned building within the Pocheon city limits.

“All operations have been ceased at the range,” Patterson said.

Rodriguez Live Fire Range is a 3,390-acre complex used year-round by both U.S. and South Korean forces. While most of the surrounding area is rural, residents have long voiced complaints over noise, fires and other incidents.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read the rest at the link.

A reunified Korean peninsula is a big if, but if it did happen one thing is for sure that USFK’s role in South Korea would undoubtedly change if not end all together.  That is what former CIA analyst Sue Mi Terry writes about in a paper discussed in the below National Interest article.  I for one think that the ROK would want to keep USFK intact with less troops on the ground as a hedge against any Chinese adventurism on the peninsula:

Last week Kim Jong-un marked the fourth anniversary of his succession to leadership and his father’s death in North Korea. The leadership transition reignited discussion among North Korea watchers over how and whether the regime would be able to survive. Two years later, Kim had his uncle, Jang Song-thaek, executed for treason, sparking another round of speculation over whether the execution reflected a step toward consolidation of power under or was evidence of infighting that might lead to a leadership vacuum in Pyongyang. Because North Korea’s totalitarian system requires isolation to perpetuate political control yet is increasingly penetrated by markets and information, speculation about North Korea’s collapse will persist, and outside observers will judge that Kim is playing a losing hand.

For this reason, policy wonks continue to discuss whether North Korea might collapse and what challenges might emerge out of such a scenario. Nevertheless, seldom discussed is how a unified Korea might behave or how the U.S.-South Korea alliance might or might not adapt, change or even dissolve as a result of unification. Answers to these questions, of course, are speculative and are difficult to conceptualize, but Sue Mi Terry, managing director for Korea at BowerGroupAsia and former CIA analyst, seeks to tackle them straight on in her discussion paper, “Unified Korea and the Future of the U.S.-South Korea Alliance.”

Starting with the most likely scenario that unification will occur with South Korea absorbing the North without a devastating war, Terry argues that a unified Korea would face three possible strategic choices: continuing the alliance with the United States in some form, becoming an independent regional power and tilting toward China. A multilateral security arrangement or a collective security mechanism is unlikely to materialize as an option.  [The National Interest]

You can read the rest at the link.

The investigation into the live anthrax spores shipped to the US military in South Korea has uncovered numerous other shipments of anthrax.  However, those shipments featured dead spores unlike the one that was mistakenly shipped to South Korea that had live spores in it.  Fortunately no one who was exposed to the live spores has contracted anthrax:

A probe by Seoul and Washington into an erroneous shipment of a live anthrax sample to a U.S. military base in Korea revealed on Thursday that samples of the deadly bacteria have been brought into the country many more times over the past six years than initially known.

Since 2009, a total of 16 anthrax samples were brought into the country by the United States Forces Korea (USFK) without the knowledge of Korean authorities, according to the results of the joint investigation.

The USFK initially told the Korean government in May that only a single anthrax sample was shipped here and that it was the first time for such an occurrence.

A live anthrax sample was mistakenly shipped in late April to the Osan Air Base in Gyeonggi, where 22 personnel were possibly exposed to live anthrax spores.

These exposed researchers and staff took antibiotics and vaccines and have not contracted the disease so far, and the live bacteria sample was immediately destroyed. However, there was an outcry in Seoul over the potential risks.

In response, the United States and Korea in July formed a joint task force to investigate how live anthrax shipments entered Korea undetected. It was composed of military and foreign affairs officials.

The 15 other anthrax samples were shipped to the U.S. military base in Yongsan District, central Seoul, between 2009 and 2014 for biological testing purposes, according to the investigation.

Korean authorities said they were not aware of these anthrax shipments because customs officials here are not authorized to look into biochemical samples for the USFK that are labeled “inactivated.”  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.