She returned to San Diego on 30 April 1948; conducted local operations into 1949, and deployed again to WestPac from March to November of that year.

Rowan remained in the Wonsan area, into November; then provided gunfire support and served on plane guard duty as U.N. forces pushed to the Yalu River and then retreated.

Seven days later, while patrolling the northern sweep area, she took a direct hit from a North Korean shore battery on the portside which damaged a 40 mm gun, her radar, and superstructure.

Into June Rowan continued to operate off the embattled peninsula on gunfire support and interdiction missions and as plane guard and escort for the carriers.

In late June she steamed south, served on the Taiwan Patrol Force into July then returned briefly to Korea, and at the end of the month sailed for San Diego.

She returned to Korea in August and through September conducted patrols off that coast to maintain the uneasy truce that began in late July.

On 3 June 1963, Rowan departed San Diego for a Fleet Rehabilitation and Modernization (FRAM) I conversion at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard.

She returned to California a year later with improved living spaces, up-to-date communications, and ASROC and DASH weapons systems.

Local operations took her into the fall and on 5 January 1965 she resumed her schedule of WestPac deployments, this time to another combat area – Vietnam.

In the fall she resumed her 7th Fleet deployments in support of ground operations in Vietnam, this time in the IV and II Corps areas and on plane guard duty in Tonkin Gulf.

1,373 U.S. citizens and 5,595 Vietnamese and third country nationals were evacuated by military and Air America helicopters to U.S. Navy ships off-shore in an approximately 24-hour period, immediately preceding the fall of Saigon.

Rowan decommissioned at 32nd St Naval Base in San Diego, California, on 18 December 1975, was struck from the Navy List on 30 January 1976 and was transferred to the Republic of China on 1 June 1977 with the name ROCS Chao Yang (DD-16).

On 22 August, she was being towed to her homeport Kaohsiung for commissioning and the cable broke when she was caught in Typhoon Aimee, and stranded on the Pingtung Fangliao coast.