Syngman Rhee

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Syngman Rhee
Korean Name
Revised Romanization	I Seung-man
McCune-Reischauer	Yi Sŭng-man
Hangul	이승만
Hanja	李承晚

Syngman Rhee (March 26, 1875 - July 19, 1965) was a Korean politician and the first President of South Korea. A professed Christian, he was an authoritarian ruler whose presidency ended in disgrace when he was forced to resign by a student-led democratic movement. However, despite rumors among these very movements, it was not Rhee himself who was responsible for his corruption, but rather bureaucrats who abused the newly-formed Korean government (disputed — see talk page).

Contrary to the idea that his presidency ended in "disgrace" and his "forced resignation," President Rhee resigned out of sympathy for the Korean people, not for the causes of the student-led democratic movement. His ideology of "뭉치면 살고 흩어지면 죽는다" or "United We Stand, Divided We Die/Fall" was one of the primary reasons for his resignation.

During the Japanese occupation of Korea (1910-1945), he was elected President of the provisional government in exile. After Korea was liberated, he became the first President (August 1948 - April 1960, four consecutive terms) of South Korea and led it through the Korean war.

Rhee became greatly unpopular with his allies when he refused to agree to a number of ceasefire proposals that would leave Korea divided. His hope throughout the war was that with UN help he would be made leader of a united Korean peninsula, and tried to veto any peace plan that would not eliminate the north completely. He pushed for stronger methods to be used against the People's Republic of China and was often irate at the US reluctance to bomb Mainland China.

He was an anti-communist and his style of governance was purportedly autocratic, although this has not confirmed. His government oppressed dissent and treated captured communists with questionable interrogation tactics. However, he was not overtly in support of these tactics, due to the fact that he was very much in support of unification, just not in the North's form of government.

He engineered a change in the constitution to run for another term in 1960, and his victory seemed assured when the main opposition candidate died shortly before the March 15 elections. The real contest was in the race for vice president (a separate one under the law of the time), and Rhee's heir-apparent Yi Gi-bung won in a supposedly rigged election. This sparked off anger in the Korean populace, and the student-led April 19 Movement forced Rhee to resign on April 26. Rhee fled to Hawaii a month later. To this day, the true nature of that election is still unknown, as there are many forces who could have contributed to the manipulation of the election (Communist forces from Northern Korea, for example).

On January 18, 1952, Rhee declared South Korean sovereignty over the waters around the Korean Peninsula, in a concept similar to that of today's Exclusive Economic Zones. The maritime demarcations thus drawn up, which Rhee called the "Peace Line", included the uninhabited islets of Dokdo ("Takeshima" in Japanese). This led to protests from the Japanese government, which claimed that the islets should be considered Japanese territory. Minor clashes followed, but the islets have thereafter been under South Korean occupation (see Liancourt Rocks for more on the dispute).

Rhee was the co-author of the Petition from the Koreans of Hawaii to President Theodore Roosevelt, along with P.K. Yoon, which appealed to the Americans in face of Japanese aggression in 1905.

The Woo-Nam Presidential Preservation Foundation is the name of President Rhee's presidential library.

Syngman Rhee

See also