Assignments/Billets in Korea?

[Spekkio]

Unpopular opinion: If your goal is to live and work in South Korea as much as possible, there are tons of DoD civilian and contractor opportunities on the peninsula. If you also want to be a naval officer too, you can do both in the reserves, after completing your initial service obligation on active duty. Depending on what you fly, there is also a possibility of IST to the Army, which is the branch that has the most presence in Korea across the service branches.

Fair warning, keeping up with USNR annual requirements when you live in Korea and your nearest NRC is Guam or Pearl is going to be a headache/expense, albeit doable.

Yep. Sounds like OP already accepted a Navy slot, but...

The Navy operates ships and therefore has little need for a large international footprint, with the exception of MPRA and some expeditionary forces. You will most likely be stationed in the US and deploy from there, on a ship, which will go to a region of the world where it is needed based on the geo-political conflicts in place at the time. Right now, that means you're going to the western Pacific or Red Sea. But that can also change with the drop of a hat.

Then you will spend your non-operational tours doing instructor duties (in CONUS for obvious reasons) at the senior O3 / junior O4 level, moving onto serving on community specific major command staffs at O4 / O5, none of which are located in Korea. And then eventually you will serve on fleet or joint staffs, and that's where there is a small opportunity to serve at USFK or CNFK, the latter not being joint and having almost no forces in theater is probably not the most career enhancing thing you want to be doing as a senior O4 / junior O5. That's the general 'blueprint' shore progression for line officers in their first 20 years, with some particulars changing based on community, luck and timing, etc. and in some cases there's opportunity to deviate with in-residence graduate education or doing a more extraneous staff job somewhere without having to take the career "off ramp." But however you slice it, by law an officer needs to be fully joint qualified prior to major command at O6, about 24 years of service.

And the size of those staffs can change over time, too. There are a lot of O5s floating around now who have spent a tour at NAVCENT / 5th Fleet in Bahrain, but right now their footprint is significantly smaller since we have withdrawn from both Iraq and Afghanistan.

So if you're seeking a large chance to be stationed outside of the U.S., you should join a service that needs to station people overseas to do its function, i.e. the Army or Air Force.

North Korea is a threat, but not a large one, so have almost a negligible Naval presence there. We have some Army presence to maintain the DMZ status quo, and a couple of very small HQ elements that can be expanded if the need were ever to arise.