Korea's Syngman Rhee. Richard C. Allen

in history as the first president of a united Korean republic. By 1945, he had come to regard himself as the embodiment of the new Korea, a Moses who had led his people out of the wilderness.

      The Syngman Rhee who returned to Korea after World War II was a strange mixture of Western idealism and Oriental guile. He believed in collective security with a Wilsonian fervor, and viewed the American occupation of South Korea as a fortuitous guarantee of American interest in Korea. He wanted Korea to be set up as a democratic republic, but only if he could be chief executive and his power could be supreme. To protect his position and increase his power he was prepared to make use of every means available. Rhee’s dealings with Korean exiles in Hawaii, however discordant, had been educational. In Honolulu there were a church and a school to testify that when Rhee could not destroy his rivals he could still forge his own way.

      Divided in half by foreign occupation, and projected overnight into the stuggle between Communist and Free World blocs, “liberated” Korea seemed hardly better off than under the Japanese. And from all sides came ambitious political exiles, anxious to fill and exploit what political vacuum might exist under the aegis of the occupying powers.

      6: Divided Korea