Lee Kyong-eun, an assistant at the Army’s Area IV chaplain’s office in Taegu, South Korea, places a balloon “crown” on the head of a youngster during a family readiness group rally at Camp Walker in Taegu on March 5. (Oh Dong-keun / U.S. Army)
PYONGTAEK, South Korea — The U.S. Army in South Korea has moved to strengthen its program for supporting family members of South Korea-based troops who may be deployed to Iraq or elsewhere, officials said.
The fresh emphasis on family readiness groups comes only months after the Pentagon called upon the 8th U.S. Army in South Korea to send troops to Iraq. And 8th Army also wants to lay the groundwork for supporting what is scheduled to be a growing number of families serving in South Korea in coming years.
Since last summer, 8th Army has sent to Iraq a brigade combat team from its 2nd Infantry Division, as well as helicopter maintenance troops, military police and military intelligence troops.
It is moving ahead with plans for the gradual consolidation of its forces into two regional hubs, a plan that foresees many more military families accompanying servicemembers.
Typically, family readiness groups are networks of military spouses who look to provide emotional support, information and other forms of help to ease the stresses of deployments or relocations. When functioning properly, they’re kept closely tied in with the military unit through the unit’s leaders and, often, through a unit member assigned as a liaison to the group.
The Army since 1999 has mandated that unit commanders set up and support family readiness groups, and they’re not new to the Army in South Korea.
The Army held family readiness group rallies March 5 at key points in South Korea to highlight the role of the groups and foster fresh interest in ensuring that each group is properly informed, organized and functioning. The rallies were at Yongsan Garrison in Seoul, Camp Humphreys in Pyongtaek, and Camp Walker in Taegu.
The meetings included service organizations such as Army Community Services, housing, medical, dental and legal services, Army Emergency Relief, United Service Organizations and others, said Faitheleen Henderson, Army Volunteer Corps coordinator for the Area II Support Activity in Seoul.
“We thought that by having an event like the rally, it would for the most part re-energize all of the groups, and those groups that perhaps were not active, give them a little booster start,” she said.
Organizers hope the rallies will spur family readiness group members to do whatever might still be needed to ensure that their groups are as ready as possible to play their proper role.
“Hopefully,” said Henderson, “we’ll see more networking of all the FRGs, working together to better support each other on the peninsula.”
Christine Cotton, 25, is married to Pfc. Randy Cotton, a military police officer with the 188th Military Police Company at Camp Walker. She attended her first FRG meeting last month with encouragement from her husband’s first sergeant.
“Before that, I wasn’t involved in anything except going to church. I was a housewife. I stayed home all the time, and the culture shock here — I didn’t realize what it was going to be.
“I met a wonderful, wonderful group of people,” Cotton said. “The first couple of months I was here, it was very lonely because my husband works very long hours. But now that I’ve met these people, they’re so wonderful, I just feel that if he was ever to be deployed, I’d have a wonderful support system.”
