Evacuate Civilians from Korea

January 15, 2003
By George Amadio

Given that we may be approaching an all-out war on the Korean peninsula, there is one subject that has not received any news media coverage but deserves the closest attention of everyone involved from the White House and Pentagon: the tens of thousands of U.S. military dependents living all over South Korea who would be trapped on an urban battlefield in event of war.

For years, all servicemen and women assigned to South Korea have been allowed to bring their families, personal automobiles and household goods if they qualify for a command sponsorship.

This means that the in-country command, U.S. Eighth Army, foots the bill, but the requirement is that the soldier, airman, Marine or sailor be in a key billet for a two-year tour, and be stationed in Seoul or south of the capital city.

One of my four tours of duty in Korea was a command sponsorship, so I know firsthand how dangerous it would be for my own family members in event of an evacuation of non-combatants after a war erupted. We regularly practiced evacuating families by having them report to a staging area to be picked up by buses and sent to a collection point for further evacuation by aircraft or ship.

I could tell you then, and I can confirm it now, that the Eighth Army does not have the logistic capability - whether land, sea or air assets, nor free use of unclogged military supply routes - to perform a safe and complete evacuation for all of the dependents in South Korea after a war breaks out.

Unofficially there are between 50,000 and 60,000 dependents in-country today, including military families, families authorized for Department of the Army civilians (DACs), DoD personnel who support military staffs, teachers for the DoD school system, and civilian contractors for weapon system support, to name a few. In addition, there are an untold number of "non-sponsored families all over South Korea who are voluntarily living in one-year tour areas with the military members footing the bill.

During limited hostilities or an all-out war on the Korean peninsula, any effort to evacuate military families and other dependents will be competing for transportation assets and for use of the roads south (along with the rest of a panicky South Korean population).

It is a hard certainty that the dependents themselves will become casualties and fatalities should North Korea launch its massive armed forces against the South, including its formidable special operations corps whose known mission will be to disrupt communication and transportation nodes prior to the actual outbreak of hostilities.

In addition, military planners assume that North Korea will use its Scud missiles - possibly armed with chemical warheads - that can reach as far south as Pusan and eastward to Japan. North Korean artillery can hit Seoul right now from their forward positions just north of the demilitarized zone (DMZ) less than 40 miles from the capital city.

How would the American dependents survive in this kind of environment? The sort answer is, they won't.

This is a potential tragedy of untold proportions that will unfold before us on our TV sets if the Pentagon allows the status quo to remain and war breaks out .

And what of the military personnel suddenly called to leave their families behind to fight the approaching North Korean army? How can their minds be on the enemy and combat if they have to worry whether or not their families have safely made it out?

The bottom line is that military dependents have no place in a country where a frail armistice is the only thing keeping these two heavily-armed countries from clawing at one another.

The solution is neither complicated nor difficult. The Defense Department needs to act now to drastically reduce the number of command sponsorships, a step that the Pentagon should have taken a long time ago. But that by itself is not enough: The U.S. military must speed up the removal of all dependents and nonessential civilian personnel from South Korea starting now.

Withdrawing nearly 60,000 people from South Korea will require a well-thought-out plan backed by a large budget and a full commitment of the resources needed to make it successfully happen. An effective evacuation operation would include:

* The Defense Department or U.S. Pacific Command should immediately dispatch a team of military and civilian logistics specialists to organize the departure of dependents by aircraft (carrying a few pieces of luggage), and the packing, storage and eventual shipping of household goods. An alternative would be for the military to replicate its 1991 evacuation of military members and dependents from the Philippines after the eruption of the volcano Mount Pinatubo, where several U.S. Navy ships (including two aircraft carriers) were used to transport thousands of people to safety in a very short period of time.)

* The evacuation must take place in increments defined by priority areas. For example, immediate priority should be given to dependents and nonessential civilian personnel who live and work between the South Korean capital of Seoul and the 2nd Infantry Division bases north of the city - which will comprise the immediate battlefield area should North Korea attack the South.

* Subsequent phases would include evacuating dependents and civilians in other parts of South Korea such as the Osan Airbase south of Seoul, Kunsan Airbase in the far southwest tip of the country, and the naval facility at Pusan on the southeastern tip of South Korea.

* The Pentagon and individual services must also organize a relocation plan for dependent families such as predetermining the service member's follow-on assignment (Japan, Germany or bases in CONUS), and implementing the family move to coincide with their evacuation from Korea.

I realize that to order a dependent evacuation en mass at this time would likely cause a panic situation in South Korea, and that the North would be tempted to exploit this - especially if South Koreans conclude that we are abandoning them.

However the political climate in South Korea is different now. Many South Koreans - not just anti-American activists - would like to see the U.S. military depart. The strategy of forward-based U.S. Army units as a tripwire to deter a North Korean invasion (and less spoken, to deter a South Korean attack on the North) has become outdated.

Whatever political risks there are in pulling American families and non-essential civilians out of South Korea are far less than the risks to those same dependents and civilians if the U.S. government does nothing and allows them to remain in what could become a horrific battlefield.

The wrong answer is to leave the families in place. That is a tragedy waiting to happen.

George Amadio is a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel with 23 years of active and reserve duty, including five years service in South Korea with the 2nd Infantry Division and the Eighth Army operation staff. He can be reached at amadiog@attbi.com.

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