To the Koreans, accustomed to their earlier Confucian relationship with China, no “big brother” would allow niceties concerning the definition of good offices to prevent him from aiding “little brother.”
Even prior to the end of the Sino-Japanese War, Japan had all but assimilated the Hermit Kingdom. A protocol was signed pledging Korea to accept Japanese “improvements in administration.” This entering wedge was followed with demands for the abolition of Korea’s department of posts and telegraphs, for the placing of Japanese police in every province, for the recall of Korean legations abroad, and finally for indemnity for every Japanese killed by Koreans in the ten years before. When a declaration of amnesty brought Rhee’s release on August 9, 1904, his country was a Japanese protectorate in all but name.
One cannot help wondering if Rhee’s lifelong hatred of the Japanese does not stem in part from his realization of how skillfully they had made use of Korea’s fledgling independence movement to neutralize Russia and accomplish their own ends. But his time in prison had not tempered his zeal for Korean independence. Upon his release, Rhee contracted two progressive ministers of the court, Prince Min Yong-hwan and General Hahn Kyu-sul. He found both concerned over Japanese encroachments and anxious to make a personal appeal to the United States. With the emperor virtually immobilized by Japanese surveillance (the Yi king had assumed the imperial title in 1897 for reasons of prestige), there seemed little possibility of the appointment of an official delegation. It was therefore determined that Rhee would go to Washington, accompanied by his erstwhile prison colleague, Lee Chung-hyuk. Theirs would be one of several fruitless missions.
When Rhee left for America in November 1904, he left behind him much of his Korean heritage. His mother had died prior to his imprisonment, and his gradual Westernization had contributed to his estrangement from his Korean wife. Upon his departure he adopted the anglicized name of Syngman Rhee, never to revert to the Korean Lee Sung-man. Yet if his thinking was to be greatly influenced by the West, his lifelong goal had already been determined by the political struggles of his youth—by independence demonstrators waving banners in the streets of Seoul.
* Robert T. Oliver, Syngman Rhee: The Man behind the Myth (New York, 1954), pp. 52-53. According to Oliver, Rhee’s first wife was somewhat older than he but was “distinguished by unusual strength of intellect and character.” Oliver acknowledges that her fate is “uncertain” but states that she bore him a son who died in Philadelphia in 1908 after being sent to America to study. It has been periodically rumored that Rhee’s first wife is still alive, pensioned off in a province of southern Korea.
3 : The Common
AS SYNGMAN Rhee watched Korea’s west coast fade into the horizon from the deck of the S. S. Ohio he was hopeful that, away from the historic rivalries of north Asia, Korea might find an ally and protector in the United States. Was there not the treaty of 1882 pledging “amity and friendship” between the Korean and the American peoples? Had not Minister Allen included the United States among treaty powers who stood prepared to use good offices on behalf of Korea?
In fact, however, Rhee’s mission was foredoomed. In the United States the Roosevelt administration was actively interested in a settlement of the Russo-Japanese War, but largely in terms of the prestige which would accrue to the United States through the proffering of its good offices. In any case, President Roosevelt looked with favor on the Japanese, while the decadence of the Korean court encouraged a general belief that Japanese rule would benefit the Korean people.
Even apart from these extenuating circumstances, it was hardly realistic to expect that an America still shackled by nineteenth-century isolationism would be willing to guarantee the independence of a country unknown to most of its people and unrelated to its national interest. Syngman Rhee, however, knew little of either American diplomacy or popular attitudes. If there was any hope for Korea in 1904, it had to be the United States. Great Britain had recognized Japan’s “special interests” in north Asia the previous year. China had long since been eliminated as a guarantor of Korean independence, and now Russia was on the verge of a humiliating defeat at the hands of the Japanese.
In Hawaii and Los Angeles, Rhee was welcomed by Korean nationalists, and various American missionaries lent encouragement. But the Roosevelt administration in Washington, assuming the role of peacemaker between Japan and Russia, had come to view Korea less as a sovereign state than as the legitimate spoils of victory, a factor capable of manipulation in the peace settlement. Into this situation Rhee brought a crusading zeal for his country and a single-minded belligerence that made it remarkable that he got as far as Oyster Bay.
Rhee arrived with letters of introduction to Senator Hugh A. Dinsmore of Arkansas, a one-time American minister in Seoul who had maintained an interest in Korea and who arranged an interview with Secretary of State John Hay. Characteristically, Rhee interpreted Hay’s assurances that the U.S. was mindful of its treaty as a guarantee of American support.
Rhee had left Lee Chung-hyuk in Los Angeles, but in Washington he was joined by Yoon Pyung-ku, a Honolulu minister who along with Rhee had been chosen by Koreans in Hawaii to petition Theodore Roosevelt on behalf of their country. After calling on Philip Jaisohn in Philadelphia, Rhee and Yoon journeyed to Oyster Bay, where they were received by Roosevelt on the eve of the Portsmouth conference. The president, effusing enthusiasm and protestations of friendship for Korea, saw them briefly. He declined to accept a written petition, however, on grounds that it should be sent through diplomatic channels.1
As far as its having any effect on Korea’s fate was concerned. Rhee’s mission was a failure. Even before he saw Roosevelt, William Howard Taft was en route to Tokyo to sign an agreement acknowledging Japan’s interests in Korea. But Rhee did not know this.
In Washington, Rhee continued to receive backing from a number of Protestant clergymen, some of whom had heard favorable accounts of him from colleagues in Seoul. For a time, Rhee considered attending a theological seminary. He probably recognized, however, that full-time ministerial duties would allow little time for political activity. In addition, his academic interests were outside the range of the usual theological curriculum.
Although he entered George Washington University on a ministerial scholarship in February 1905, he continued to devote much of his time to agitation on behalf of Korea. Little is known of Rhee’s activities in this period, but that he was a source of annoyance to American officials is suggested by a comment from Minister Allen in Seoul, who wrote apologetically to Senator Dinsmore: “I refused to give Ye Sung Mahn a letter to a single person in America and tried to keep him from going.”2
At George Washington, Rhee’s subjects included English, European and American history, and philosophy. Although he had been admitted as a sophomore in recognition of his studies in Seoul, his marks were generally indifferent. The foreign student is recognized as often being at a disadvantage in an American university, but Rhee’s mediocre record is not without some significance. Although he would later earn a Ph.D. at Princeton, and at the height of his political career would prefer the title of “Doctor” to that of “President,” little in Rhee’s career shows him as a profound thinker. Rather, his early career is marked by singleminded devotion to an ideal—Korean independence—and hostility towards every peril, real or imagined, which threatened this ideal.
Rhee supported himself at George Washington through lectures on “Korea, Land of the Morning Calm.” But in his homeland the struggle to resist the Japanese was in its final throes. The Portsmouth treaty in September 1905 brought general recognition of Japan’s “paramount” interest in Korea. Horace Allen, lobbying for Korea in Washington since his replacement as American minister, regretfully returned his operating funds to the Yi emperor with the remark that the cause was hopeless. In November 1905, Tokyo spelled out its demands for a virtual protectorate over Korea. At first the emperor refused to consent, but when the palace was surrounded by Japanese soldiers, when government ministers were beaten, and when the emperor himself was threatened, the Japanese emerged with the imperial signature.
In