Below are excerpts from the transcript of Gen. Bell’s press conference (PDF), 9 January 2007 at Yongsan Post. During the conference Gen. Bell said he was “surprised” about press reports of Seoul delaying the Yongsan move to 2013 as they had not consulted USFK on the delay, and chastised the South Korean government, describing Seoul’s decision as, “simply not right.” This generated a lot of comments at the Marmots, and was also well covered by GI Korea (and here), OneFreeKorea, and The Lost Nomad.

Most commentary was related to the much deserved public smack down of the Roh administration by Gen. Bell, but more important in my view was the public affirmation of making Korea an accompanied tour for military members. South Korea is currently a 12 to 18 month “hardship” tour (family not authorized) for most of those stationed there, as opposed to “accompanied” tours (family sponsored by the command) that generally last at least two years.

The cost of transporting and hosting families would be higher, but would also be offset due to less frequent permanent change of station (PCS) orders overall. Less turnover would also mean greater stability in the workplace, which should be reflected in a more ready force. Finally, not splitting families up for a hardship tour should be viewed as a quality of life improvement, and could affect retention rates.

General Bell starts off with a little sweet-talk for the ROK audience:

First, Korea is a great land, with a rich culture, a magnificent history, and with incredibly wonderful people. My wife Katie and I are blessed to have the opportunity to serve in this magnificent country — a country that is a model for developing democracies all across the world.

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The Republic of Korea military leaders I have met and worked with are all, without question, among the most competent, capable and best trained in the world. These ROK military leaders are true warriors.

But then quickly moves into the area of improving U.S.-ROK relations:

My view of the ROK - US Alliance remains unchanged. Our Alliance is strong and enduring. We can make it stronger. The United States will remain a trusted and reliable ally as long as we are welcome and wanted in the Republic of Korea. The ROK-US Alliance will continue to be a vibrant and effective deterrent, as long as both our nations remain united in their resolve to ensure lasting peace and security and stability… (emphasis added)

These “as long as” qualifications serve to shift the tone in a more serious direction; Seoul’s delay of the Yongsan relocation. As I wrote before, preparations have been going on for some time:

Our major effort is at Camp Humphreys. At Camp Humphreys we are consolidating U.S. Army forces and our future USFK Headquarters. This process is underway and we are making positive progress with nearly 600 million dollars currently invested in on-going construction.

In light of this, I must admit that I was surprised when I read recent press reports that a ROK government official stated the relocation of U.S. forces would not occur until 2013. This was news to me, and not at all reflective of the agreement we have with the Republic of Korea government to achieve this move by 2008.
Any further delay in our consolidation efforts at Camp Humphreys concerns me. Delays will unnecessarily subject USFK personnel and our families to more years of living and working in old, outdated, and, in many cases, dilapidated Korean War era facilities and housing. Furthermore, delays will slow down my efforts to increase the number of family accompanied tours for U.S. military personnel. Increasing the number of families accompanying U.S. Service members on tours in Korea is essential to enhancing our good neighbor and engagement programs with the Korean citizenry. . .

I do not want to see any further delays. It is simply not right. . . On behalf of my personnel and their families, I hope the press reports were wrong.

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Additionally, USFK faces a significant financial shortfall as a result of the Strategic [Special] Measures Agreement burden sharing allocation. During recent negotiations, USFK presented a minimum requirement of 832 billion won. This would have represented a 44 percent burden sharing contribution by the ROK government towards USFK non-personnel stationing costs. In the end, the ROK government offered the United States 725.5 billion won. I will have to resolve this more than 100 billion won shortfall for calendar year 2007. I have to pay real money for real bills. I will be more than 100 billion won short of funds necessary to pay the bills during the year 2007.

(responding to press questions)

Now, I’ll talk about base relocation. I am clearly emotional about this. When [I] walk into some of my families’ living arrangements with ladies and young babies and. . . recognize that these Americans are serving thousands miles from home and they don’t have their extended families; they don’t have their normal lives. They want to be normal over here. . . So I am opposed to any decision to stretch this out for any reason, whether it be political, fiscal or money or whatever it is. I want to get it done so I can look in the eyes of these little children and these moms and say we’re doing right by you.

We agreed back in 2004 to get this done by 2008. Now here we are entering into 2007 and we’ve started the process. If you go down to Camp Humphreys you’ll see buildings going up and you’ll see progress. The problem is that pretty quick in the future all of that is going to stop, or it could stop, because of fiscal constraints, money constraints, or political decisions. I will fight this because I don’t want to leave my families or my Service members in bad conditions. I want them to be normal.

Last point, I believe it is essential for US Forces Korea to be what I call an accompanied tour. I need to explain that because it’s very important. Most, the majority, of US Service members, over here serve, what we call, unaccompanied tours. Their families are not authorized to come with them. We don’t allow it. So we’ve forced them to be separated from their spouses and their kids. I don’t think that’s right. Furthermore, I believe we have a lasting alliance, and one of the components of that should be USFK families engaging with Korean families, culturally, socially, together as one, sharing their lives together. I don’t think we ought to have a soldier come over here and hide in the barracks for a year and then go back to the States. I think we ought to have a soldier and his or her family and their kids come over here, go to school with Koreans, play with Koreans, engage with Koreans, grow up with Koreans and learn each others’ culture together. Camp Humphreys is one place that affords me the opportunity to expand facilities to increase the number of accompanied tours. The more increases we achieve in accompanied tours, the more normal we make this assignment, I believe, the more help we will give to the future of the alliance. And I am certain it will be a better deal for American Service members and their families. So I am a big proponent of Camp Humphreys for all those reasons.

You asked when I will move the colors, my headquarters, down there. I don’t know. I’ve got to have a decent headquarters that functions. It’s not there yet. And I’m working on plans to get it built as soon as possible. But I don’t have a date for you so I can’t answer that question today. All I do know is I can’t go down there right now and find a chair a say that’s where I’m commanding from. It doesn’t make sense. So we’ll have to keep working that.

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From the American perspective, for our family housing, which I’m trying to build, my government expects us to use a process called Build-To-Lease wherein a Korean entrepreneur would build a family housing set of quarters and the United States government would guarantee a lease for a long time to ensure he or she gets their money back on their investment. That’s about half of our costs. For the other half I have to use burden sharing money. If I don’t have burden sharing money, I’ve got to make a choice. It’s just plain and simple. I have to choose whether to lay off Korean civilian employees, which is extremely problematic because they contribute to my readiness. Or, I have to decide to cut back on my logistics or sustainment - again another no-go because that affects my readiness. So I’m kind of driven into a corner where the only thing I can back away from is my building program. But I don’t want to do that because it just stretches out the building process. So I’m being put into a bad position, from a policy perspective, of not having the money to do what our two governments told me to do.

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REPORTER: I think we need to go through the Camp Humphreys issue again (paraphrased). USFK believes it is physically possible to complete construction and move to Camp Humphreys by the end of the year 2008. However, the Korean government feels it is physically difficult to complete construction that early and is leaning towards late 2009 or 2010 and 2013 when including the 2ID. Do you think it is physically possible to complete all construction and move down to Camp Humphreys in 2008? Does USFK have other views or options that there may be a possibility to delay this process?

GEN BELL: Building stuff is a function of two things. It takes money and time to put brink and mortar in place. If you mess with either one of those, it’ll take longer. What I’m looking for is a commitment to do this as expeditiously as possible. I realize there have been many complex issues surrounding the Camp Humphrey’s move. Politically, there have been protestors, some wonderful Koreans have been displaced, and I regret that. But this is an agreement between two governments. And now that we’ve made the agreement, and now that the citizens have been displaced and now that the land has been prepared or is being prepared, I think that it would serve both nations well to allocate the money necessary to do this as quickly as our construction companies can do it. I think that if we stretch it out because of money it won’t serve our purposes. So it’s not only about the physics of building with brick and mortar.

The physics do take some time but it’s also about commitment, frankly by both countries, to get this done. And if they don’t commit to an aggressive building program it will take decades. In the mean time, the quality of life for the military members and their families here will continue to degrade. Don’t forget, as I’m looking at Camp Humphreys, nobody will let me spend any money on the old facilities because they see that as a waste. So I’m caught in a soft seam here. I’m caught. I can’t fix up the old places and I can’t build the new places. That’s not fair. So I think we ought to build the new places. We’re great allies. We have a great alliance. We’re going to sit down and figure this out. We’re not going to debate this in the press. We’re going to find a way to go ahead and we will. We will sit down through the correct processes, both our Status of Forces Agreement process and our political processes where necessary, like Strategic [Security] Policy Initiative meetings, and iron this thing out and figure out where we are. I hope we will be able to do this sooner than later. I can’t offer you anything else today because I don’t have any other facts right now. All I know is what I read in the newspaper a couple of weeks ago.

Related news from the Washington Times, the http://english.donga.com/srv/service.php3?biid=2007011070198 " target="_blank">Dong-a Ilbo, the Chosun, and the Joongang.