century. Korea found itself at the mercy first of Japanese militarism and then of Soviet imperialism. For the first half of the twentieth century the Japanese saw to it that Korea remained the Hermit Kingdom. Indeed, the peninsula was effectively blocked off from Western political and philosophical thought until after 1945.
When the Japanese surrender brought the liberation of Korea after World War II, freedom came only to the southern half. Even here, foreign domination was succeeded by domestic turmoil and finally by civil war. For over a decade, Korea was a cold-war pawn in her international relations and a tightly run police state in her domestic affairs. Not until 1960 did the Korean people assume a major voice in the determination of their country’s destiny. They could not eject the Communists from the northern half of their homeland, but they could and did move their own half of Korea a step in the direction of political freedom. The future is in the hands of the people of South Korea.
Yet if South Korea is at the threshold of a new era, what of the old? One man spanned the decades between the period of Chinese suzerainty in Korea—through the Japanese occupation and for almost fifteen years following World War II—and the recent revolution. He reached a pinnacle of popularity during the post-liberation period, yet twelve years later was thrown out of office by revolution. The man is Syngman Rhee, who during his own lifetime has become almost a legend in both the East and the West and who, in much of the world, is considered the veritable embodiment of the struggle for Korean independence.
It is always saddening when a patriot is corrupted by the power that comes to him as a gift from his people after a lifetime ol service to his country. Yet the same people who demanded the resignation of Syngman Rhee as their president in April of 1960 recalled enough of his earlier services to cheer him as he reluctantly abdicated the absolute authority that he had held for so many years.
The story of South Korea is indeed the story of its erstwhile president, even as the fall of his government can be traced directly to the personal shortcomings of the head of state. In retrospect, Rhee as president had two great failings. One was his ego: his unwillingness to accept criticism and his obsession with his own infallibility. The second was his advanced age, a condition over which he had no control but which underscored his tendencies toward inflexibility and irresponsibility. So formidable were the problems involved in dealing with Korea’s irascible patriarch that, when the Korean people finally deposed him of their own volition, the reaction from Washington was one of obvious relief.
Syngman Rhee, in a statement issued from his retirement, has indicated that he awaits vindication by history. He may come to feel, with General Burgoyne in Shaw’s The Devil’s Disciple, that “History, sir, will tell lies, as usual.” In any case, the chapters that follow will touch upon a number of areas in which Dr. Rhee can expect the judgment of history to be harsh.
In writing of Rhee and his times, the author has grappled with a problem that must plague anyone who writes on Korea: the transliteration of Korean names. In the Korean language, the surnames Rhee, Lee, and Yi are all written with the same character. But the subject of this work is known throughout the world as Syngman Rhee, and his late political lieutenant was generally known as Lee Ki-bung. The author has therefore used the spelling best known in the West, but has generally placed the surname first (e.g., Kim Il-sung) in accordance with Korean custom.
The author is grateful to the following for their permission to quote from the works cited: Dodd, Mead and Company, Syngman Rhee: The Man behind the Myth, by Robert T. Oliver (copyright 1954 by Robert T. Oliver); Harper and Brothers, From the Danube to the Yalu, by Mark W. Clark (1954), The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1942, edited by Samuel Rosenman (1950), and Soldier, by Matthew B. Ridgway (1956); Harper’s Magazine, “Syngman Rhee: The Free Man’s Burden,” by Frank Gibney (February 1954); Jacques Chambrun, Inc., Korean Tales, by Melvin B. Voorhees (1952); the Louisiana State University Press, Korea and the Old Orders in East Asia, by Frederick M. Nelson (1946); The Macmillan Company, Korea Tomorrow, by Chung Kyung-cho (1956), and Memoirs, by Cordell Hull (1948); the Robert M. McBride Company, Decision in Korea, by Rutherford M. Poats (1954); Frederick A. Praeger, Inc., The Peoples of the Soviet Far East, by Walter Kolarz (1954); the Fleming H. Revell Company, Japan Inside Out, by Syngman Rhee (1944); Time-Life, Inc., Years of Decision and Years of Trial and Hope, by Harry S. Truman (1955, 1956); the University of Pennsylvania Press, The Korea Knot, by Carl Berger (1957); The Viking Press, Inc., The Forrestal Diaries, edited by Walter Millis (1951); A. A. Wyn, Inc., My Forty-Year Fight for Korea, by Louise Yim (1951); the Council on Foreign Relations, Korea: A Study of U.S. Policy in the United Nations, by Leland M. Goodrich (1956); the Institute of Pacific Relations, Korea Today, by George M. McCune (1950), Modern Korea, by Andrew J. Grajdanzev (1944), and Source Materials on Korean Politics and Ideologies, edited by Donald G. Tewksbury; the Ronald Press Company, The Koreans and Their Culture, by Cornelius Osgood; the Christian Science Monitor; the New York Times.
Korea’s
1 : Syngman Rhee’s
GEOGRAPHICALLY, Korea is a mountainous peninsula jutting out from the Asia mainland, slightly larger than the state of Minnesota. Politically it has long been a weak nation surrounded by powerful neighbors, a focal point for the rivalries of China, Japan, and Russia. In recent years Korea has taken on a third, ideological dimension, for in 1950 it became a symbol of the sacrifices the Free World was—and was not— prepared to make in order to contain Communist aggression.
The key to Korea’s history, like that of Poland and Belgium, has been its geographic location. A buffer between Japan and the Asia mainland, Korea has borne the brunt of repeated invasions and encroachments by its neighbors. It has been Korea’s lot to have its destiny determined by others.
The Koreans themselves are a Mongoloid people numbering about thirty-two million; hence they are about the twelfth largest ethnic group in the world. Today there is little about the Koreans to suggest that theirs was once a flourishing civilization, yet in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries Korea enjoyed a golden age comparable to any in the East. With the advent of the Yi dynasty came the earliest astronomical tower, the first use of movable metal type, and the successful employment of ironclad warships. Korean influences made themselves felt in the arts and crafts of Japan.
Korea’s internal development saw a gradual evolution from separate tribal groups to feudal kingdoms, and finally to a united Korea under the Silla (57 B.C.—A.D. 935) and Yi (A.D. 1392-1910) dynasties. But the lot of the Korean peasant changed little with Korea’s entry into modern times. He works his land today with tools little different from those of his ancestors, and lives in the L-shaped thatched hut which evolved over centuries. While Seoul periodically seethed with intrigue, the Korean farmer generally stuck close to his task of earning subsistence from an overcrowded land. Only recently has he felt the encroachments of a central government; for centuries he had only to tolerate the tax collector who came to take his rice and cloth. Even today the farmer leads his oxcart to market over the same dusty road traversed by his ancestors.
Culturally, the Koreans are notable if only for having successfully resisted cultural assimilation by the Chinese. Almost from the dawn of Korean history China played a major influence in the peninsula, first bringing Buddhism to Korea and later the classical literature of Confucius. But although Korean literature and ceramics were strongly influenced by the Chinese, the Koreans retained their own language and a national identification apart from the Asia mainland.
The flowering of the Yi dynasty ended with the Hideyoshi invasion of1592, during which the Japanese laid waste to the peninsula before being turned back by a Korean army and its Chinese allies. The Korean court never truly recovered from the shock of Hideyoshi’s invasion, and it shortly fell prey to a Manchu invasion from the north. The Korean people suffered patiently the ravages of war, pestilence, and taxation, but peace brought little relief. Corruption became rife in the royal court in Seoul,