MARINE CORPS AIR STATION IWAKUNI, Japan -- YECHON, South Korea - While deployed to South Korea for Foal Eagle '03, the involved units relied heavily on some of Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni's Korean translators.
For translators like Cpl. Jung Cho, there is never any downtime on deployment while taking on the task of translating and working his primary military occupational specialty of being a drafter and surveyor for Marine Wing Support Squadron 171.
During the deployment, Cho often worked both jobs at the same time by drawing up construction plans and translating phone calls simultaneously.
Although Cho puts in more than 15 hours a day, the job is easy for the South Korean native, who lived in Korea and spoke the language for almost his whole life.
"I lived in Seoul with my parents until I was 16 years old," said Cho. "My sister and I moved to the United States for the educational opportunities, but for the first two years I spoke almost no English."
When Cho joined the Marine Corps, his English vocabulary vastly improved from the few basic greetings and phrases he knew when he first moved to the U.S.
"When I joined the Marine Corps, I had to learn all the terms of my MOS, so English started becoming more and more familiar to me," he said.
After Cho had entered the Fleet Marine Force and had become fluent in English, he decided to take the Defense Language Aptitude Battery, a test that rates an individual's ability to translate between English and a foreign language.
"I first heard about the test in boot camp, and I finally took it when I got to the fleet I scored the highest level of translation ability," he said.
After passing the test with flying colors, Cho was awarded his secondary MOS as a Korean translator.
When Cho arrived to Iwakuni, he was attached to MWSS-171, who quickly put him to work translating on deployments such as Foal Eagle '02 and the Korean Incremental Training Program.
Although Cho is fully capable of multi-tasking between his primary and secondary MOSs, the frequent need of translators requires the need of Cpl. Michael Chung, who shares the same MOSs as Cho and the same responsibilities.
"We work very long days, and we are often called in whenever an embarkation comes in," said Chung. "Working more than 15 hours a day is not uncommon while we are out here."
Although there is a high need in the Marine Corps for translators like Cho and Chung, Cho plans on pursuing college scholarships and eventually returning to Seoul to spend time with his parents.
"Without the translators here we'd be at a great loss - not only in terms of coordination with the Republic of Korea Air Force's daily operations, but also when we go out for liberty, on logistic operations and in cross-nation knowledge exchanges between our units," said 2nd Lt. Chinpassueth Sonethavilay, S-6 tactical security officer.