YONHAP NEWS

USFK commander hopes to extend Korea tour of U.S. troops to 3 years

By Byun Duk-kun
SEOUL, Jan. 10 (Yonhap) -- The top U.S. military official in South Korea hopes to extend to three years tours by American troops to South Korea that will enable them to bring their families with them, a spokesman for the commander of the U.S. forces here said Thursday.
"Gen. B. B. Bell is a strong proponent of long term and permanent stationing of U.S. military forces in Korea," Col. Franklin Childress, the spokesman for the South Korea-U.S. Combined Forces Command (CFC), said in a press release. The commander of the U.S. Forces Korea also heads the CFC and the United Nations Command in Korea.
"It is his desire," the statement added, "(to) transform all assigned U.S. forces to three-year family-accompanied tours for U.S. servicemembers, instead of the one-year family-unaccompanied tours which currently characterize U.S. Forces Korea stationing."
The remarks came as a response to an earlier report by Seoul's Kyunghyang Shinmun newspaper that the United States plans to transform its frontline 2nd Infantry Division in South Korea into a rotating unit, which will enable Washington to quickly redeploy the unit to outside of Korea when there are conflicts in other areas.

"To suggest that the 2nd Infantry Division will become a rotating unit is a complete fabrication," Gen. Bell was quoted by the CFC spokesman as saying.