South Korea: The Exile's Last Return

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Soon after World War II, when the image of Russia as America's ally in arms still loomed large and benevolent, one crisp voice from the Orient peppered Washington with warning after angry warning about Communist intentions. It was the voice of Dr. Syngman Rhee, who in 1948, at the age of 73, had finally realized his dream of six decades by becoming the first freely elected President of a democratic republic in Korea. To the consternation of Washington officials, the doughty little Korean wanted from the start to ram a hard fist in the face of the Communists who had seized the northern half of his land and were looking hungrily south.

Rhee had good reason to fear the malice of invaders. For 43 years, Korea had been under the rule of another foreign nation, Japan, and Rhee, as President of Korea's government in exile, had spent most of this time fighting a fruitless campaign for recognition. Before that, he had endured brutal torture and seven years in prison for demanding a constitutional democracy from Korea's last Emperor. In his years of exile, he had acquired an M.A. from Harvard, a Ph.D. from Princeton, an Austrian wife, and the respect of both his own people and many Americans. He had also learned the wisdom of the Korean proverb, "When whales fight, shrimp are eaten."

Task of Peace. Fifteen years ago this summer, on June 25, 1950, the North Korean Reds invaded the South—just as Rhee had predicted. By this time, the U.S. had got militant, too, and Harry Truman sent U.S. troops in defense of South Korea, rallying the U.N. to join the fight. As the fighting raged up and down the peninsula, it became clear that the eventual result was to be a military standoff near the 38th parallel. That was not good enough for Syngman Rhee, who publicly and furiously argued that unless all of Korea was reclaimed, the U.S. would be doomed to perpetual piecemeal containment of Communism. When the treaty of Panmunjom was signed, on July 27, 1953, the old fighter burst into tears.

With the coming of peace, Rhee struggled to rebuild his devastated little country. The task was doubly difficult because, historically, South Korea had been the agricultural part of an underdeveloped country, with what heavy industry there was located in the North.

Nor was the problem only economic, for by this time Rhee was getting into his 80s. Tragically, at the very time he could have been most useful to his country, he had become too old and inflexible to serve it well. Fading fast were the lofty visions of democracy for which he had gone to jail so long ago. Now his high-handed ways were earning him bitter enemies among the most enlightened groups in the country. Charges of corruption flew thick and fast around his Cabinet. In 1960 he was re-elected to a fourth term, but in a flurry of rigged ballots and intimidated (even murdered) opponents. Suddenly student mobs were rampaging out of control through the streets of Seoul, and violence swept the rest of the nation. Rhee knew it was time to step down, and he did.