SEOUL, South Korea — The 2nd Infantry Division is asking bar owners for help in reducing troop misbehavior after several incidents sparked negative publicity and calls from local officials for the U.S. military to rein in soldier conduct.

Maj. Gen. Thomas Vandal, 2ID commander, said Army officials met with about 20 owners of bars in the “Ville” outside Camps Casey and Hovey several weeks ago. Citing excessive alcohol usage as the main contributor to misconduct, the division wants bartenders to call military police when they believe a soldier’s drinking is getting out of hand.

“We asked them to help us with this campaign for responsible drinking that really gets at causing our soldiers to stop, pause and reflect before they have that extra drink, before we see it affects their judgment,” Vandal told Stars and Stripes. “They understand the intent. They were very positive, quite frankly,” he said, adding that soldiers getting in trouble is bad for a bar’s business and can lead to being put off-limits to troops.

Park Young Ho, owner of the Mustang Club and head of the Korea Foreigner Tourist Facility Association’s Dongducheon branch, said most bar owners are happy to comply with 2ID’s request. Many have felt there is little they can do when troops get drunk and worry that kicking them out could lead to further problems and endanger other customers.

“This is great,” he said. “We can call them (military police) and ask them to take the drunken soldiers to the bases.”

The effort is part of 2ID’s new “Think Twice” campaign to encourage responsible behavior among its more than 10,000 soldiers, who make up more than a third of the 28,500 U.S. troops stationed on the peninsula.

The campaign, announced this week, emphasizes the dangers of excess drinking and encompasses a number of measures already in place, from cultural awareness classes for newly arrived soldiers to promotion of off-duty activities that don’t involve drinking, like sports and college classes.

It also includes more partnership with civic leaders in Dongducheon and Uijeongbu, where major 2ID bases are located, as well as bar owners, Vandal said.

“Ninety-nine percent of our soldiers do what’s right. They’re serving abroad, they’re doing a very challenging tough mission and they’re putting themselves in harm’s way,” Vandal said. But the few soldiers who cause trouble take “away from all the great things our soldiers are doing.”

He said several recent acts of misconduct around the Labor Day weekend prompted the division to enact Think Twice, which he described as a “holistic” approach to improving troop behavior. Those incidents included curfew violations and several acts of drunken and disorderly behavior, both on and off post.

Even minor crimes involving U.S. troops can receive national scrutiny in South Korea, where servicemembers are often perceived as being allowed to run afoul of the law with impunity. But 2ID officials say the number of crimes involving its soldiers is ticking downward.

Command spokesman Lt. Col. Scott Rawlinson said in an emailed statement that the command is beginning to track whether any establishments have contacted military police for assistance since the meeting with bar owners.

According to figures provided by 2ID from its provost marshal’s office, alcohol was involved in more than 70 percent of reported sexual assaults and more than 50 percent of aggravated assaults involving 2ID soldiers in the 12 months ending Sept. 30. It did not provide specifics on how many incidents there were.

Rawlinson said that because alcohol-related incidents are tracked quarterly, it is too soon to know the impact of Think Twice, but no incidents of soldiers violating South Korean law were reported off post over the Veteran’s Day holiday weekend. Typically, misbehavior tends to spike over long holiday weekends, he said.

An official with the Gyeonggi Provincial Police Agency in Uijeongbu said he believes the number of felonies being committed by 2ID soldiers is decreasing and the command is doing a good job of curbing troop misconduct.

But South Koreans tend to focus on misbehavior as a general issue, not where a soldier is stationed.

“Where the person is attached to doesn’t seem to be so important in crimes committed by USFK soldiers,” he said.

Earlier this fall, Uijeongbu city hall expressed skepticism that 2ID could do anything to stop troop misconduct after a 2ID soldier’s alleged assault of a taxi driver led Mayor Ahn Byung Yong to boycott a friendship concert at Camp Red Cloud in September. Less than a week after that incident, another soldier was accused of flirting with a 26-year-old South Korean woman at a subway station and shoving her toward a wall.

“I wouldn’t go so far as to say people can’t step out onto the street at night. But they are nervous, and they are scared (of U.S. soldiers),” a spokesman for the mayor said at the time.

Also in September, three 2ID soldiers were given suspended sentences for a drunken disturbance at a water park in which two female employees were touched inappropriately and a male park employee and a police officer were attacked.

The youth and lack of professional experience among 2ID soldiers — this is the first military assignment for 54 percent of them — as well as South Korea’s reputation as an assignment where lax behavior is tolerated may contribute to conduct problems.

“They might have heard from other people that have been stationed in Korea in the past — there’s some stories out there that you can get away with anything in Korea because what happens in Korea stays in Korea,” said 2ID Command Sgt. Major Andrew Spano, adding that the division is trying to change that perception. “But what happened 25 years ago is nothing like it is now.”

Vandal said elements of the Korean media remain unfairly “fixated” on misbehavior within 2ID and often ignore similar misconduct within the South Korean army ranks.

But he said he believes efforts to curb misconduct have had an effect.

“We think it is working, but we also acknowledge with the turnover we have on the peninsula, this is something we have to encourage consistently, every month,” he said.

Stars and Stripes’ Yoo Kyong Chang contributed to this story.

rowland.ashley@stripes.com