with Japanese harassment of Korean Christians. By the fall of 1911, rumors were rife that, as part of the Japanese campaign to stamp out foreign influence, Christian churches in Korea would have their charters revoked and be placed under Japanese administration. With little warning, 135 leading Korean Christians were arrested on charges of a “conspiracy” to assassinate the governor-general.
Pressure from Western church circles forced reduction of the severe sentences which had been meted out to the Korean churchmen, but Rhee, fearful that he might be next, determined to leave Korea for good. He left his homeland with probably little hope of seeing it again, but with recognition that as long as Korea remained under the Japanese he would be far better off in the West.
Not long after Woodrow Wilson reached the White House, his doctrines of self-determination became known in Korea, where the Fourteen Points served to remind the people of a national heritage dissipated by Korea’s own rulers. In addition, the death of the deposed emperor in January 1919 gave rise to a surge of patriotic feeling. Whatever the shortcomings of the Yi dynasty, it had at least meant rule of Korea by Koreans.
4. Syngman Rhee (right front) with a group of students at Princeton University in 1910, the year in which Rhee received his doctorate and Japan formally annexed Korea. It was at Princeton that Rhee became a faculty favorite and attracted the attention of Woodrow Wilson, who cited him as “a man of strong patriotic feeling and of great enthusiasm for his people.” (Pacific Stars and Stripes Photo)
On March 1, 1919, thirty-three leading Koreans met in the Bright Moon Cafe in Seoul, where they signed a declaration of Korean independence which was then read to crowds in the street. Demonstrations spread from Seoul to the countryside, with marching crowds waving long-concealed Korean flags and chanting: “Mansei!” (May Korea live ten thousand years!) To underscore the peaceful character of the demonstrations, and with the hope of bringing world opinion to bear on the Japanese, the signatories of the declaration immediately surrendered themselves to the Japanese. Although there were some cases of Korean-instigated violence, the peaceful character of the demonstrations was generally maintained.
The Japanese reaction to the Mansei uprising was swift and cruel. According to Japanese figures, 553 Koreans were killed, over 1,400 wounded, and over 10,000 flogged. In retrospect, prospects for outside intervention were so poor in 1919 that the uprising was clearly ill-timed. The armistice had taken its toll of the Wilsonian idealism which had marked the war years, while Japan had emerged from the war with sufficient prestige that none of the Allies were anxious to antagonize Tokyo. When Rhee had sought to lobby for Korea at Versailles in 1918, he had been refused an American passport lest his presence there embarrass the Japanese.*
To the Koreans, the dignity which marked the nation-wide passive resistance has given it a special place in Korean history. In both its peaceful character and the popular backing it received, the Mansei uprising was a high point in the Korean independence movement. Henceforth the independence movement would be noteworthy not for its unity but for its factionalism. Foreign influences, particularly communism, would sap the movement of its purely nationalistic aspect. In the place of passive resistance, violence would become a hallmark of Korean exiles.
The aftermath of the uprising, however, was noteworthy for the formation of a provisional Korean government. A group of independence leaders, meeting in Seoul in April 1919, formed a Korean Provisional Government with Syngman Rhee as president. Although the Provisional Government had not in any sense been elected by the Korean people, appointment of Rhee as its president was recognition of his growing stature in the independence movement. His role in the new government provided a quasi-official basis for his diplomatic representations on behalf of Korea over the next three decades.
The Provisional Government began as essentially a triumvirate of Kim Koo, Ahn Chang-ho, and Rhee, although as time went on, others would play an increasing role. Kim, as premier, established close links with the Chinese Nationalists, and in the 1930’s strongly supported Sino-Korean guerrilla activities against the Japanese, while directing assassinations which made him, among the Japanese, the most feared of all Korean exiles. Ahn Chang-ho, leader of the Western-oriented Young Korea Academy (Hungsadan) faction, spent much of his time in Hawaii but was closely associated with underground activity in Korea itself until his death in 1939. Rhee, who was popularly regarded as being on friendly terms with President Wilson, operated largely in the United States. The Provisional Government was controlled from Shanghai, and tended to reflect more the leadership of Kim Koo than of Rhee.
Rhee had left Korea in the spring of 1912, with his nomination as Korean delegate to a Methodist convention in Minneapolis providing him passage. There he first manifested a lifelong penchant for using any available forum for political purposes by delivering a ringing denunciation of the Japanese, which drew severe criticism for endangering missionary activities which had to be carried on under the occupation.6
Rhee could not earn a living from his speeches, however, and in 1913 accepted a job as principal of a Korean-language school in Hawaii. The islands would be his home until shortly prior to World War II; they would also be the breeding ground for rivalries—both within and without the framework of the Provisional Government—which would largely dominate post-liberation politics in Korea. In Hawaii as well as in Washington, Rhee would earn his reputation as the stormy petrel of Korean independence.
* Andrew J. Grajdanzev, Modern Korea (New York, 1944), pp. 34-35. Kennan, a close friend of Theodore Roosevelt, was the uncle of America’s erstwhile ambassador to the Soviet Union and was frequent contributor to Outlook, the magazine in which this article appeared.
* Although Rhee was in the United States at the time of the Mansei uprising and played no role in the events of 1919, spokesmen for the Rhee government encouraged references to him as a “leader” of the revolt. When Rhee was forced to abdicate in 1960, at least one wire service story characterized him as having led the 1919 uprising.
4: The Politics
THE PERIOD of the Japanese occupation sent many Koreans away from their homeland. Gradually there came to be three major centers of Korean exiles: the Maritime Province of the U.S.S.R., northern China, and the United States. All three, together with Korea itself, were centers of independence activities. The importance of the expatriate groups is measured by the fact that after liberation both north and south Korea would be largely ruled by erstwhile expatriates.
Within the United States and its territories, no place was more a hotbed of exile activity than Hawaii. Many Asian immigrants to America had gotten no further than Hawaii; there were Japanese, Chinese, and Koreans, some of whom had run out of money in Hawaii, others of whom had been won over by the attractions of living among their fellow nationals in the islands. If the Korean community in Hawaii was not the largest in size, it nonetheless reflected more than any other group the turbulence in its homeland.
Politically conscious Koreans have historically found difficulty in working harmoniously together. Indeed, when Syngman Rhee was beginning his revolutionary career in the Independence Club he had refused a request by Philip Jaisohn to suspend publication of the Maiyil Sinmun lest it compete with the club organ Independence. A tendency towards factionalism long prevalent in Korean politics was nowhere more in evidence than among exiles in Hawaii, who brought old feuds with them from Korea and developed new ones in the islands. By 1913, the Korean community there was already marked by divisions based on family ties, personal animosities, and provincial origins.
Rhee arrived in Hawaii full of plans for stimulating nationalism among the Koreans there. His post as principal of a Korean-language school, however, brought him into conflict with Methodist authorities over the issue of segregated schools. Although church officials opposed separate schools for different nationalities, Rhee fought for segregation as a means of propagating Korean nationalism. Opposition from church leaders prompted Rhee to break with the Methodists in 1916 and