Word: rhee
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...ailing Lee-who has to be carried to Assembly sessions-resigned his office in protest. Corruption last week had become a major issue in war-torn South Korea: the National Assembly, like Lee, was sick of President Syngman Rhee's dishonest underlings. Latest scandal: embezzlement of some $800,000 in National Defense Corps funds...
...Rhee moved swiftly to calm the storm. He signed a law, already passed by the Assembly, abolishing the corps, ordered the arrest of the corps commander, a hulking ex-wrestler named Kim Yong Keun. The Assembly was not pacified. It refused to elect a Rhee man as Lee's successor, instead chose Kim Sung Soo, 60, wealthy head of the anti-Rhee Democratic Nationalist Party and respected member of Seoul's Rotary Club...
There are many signs of liberalism in the structure of the Korean government. When elected, Rhee offered a 27-point program guaranteeing economic and social democracy as well as political democracy. The Assembly passed a land-reform act which provided for the sale of 90% of all landlord-owned farms to their tenants, who were to pay 20% of their annual crop for 15 years Rhee's democratic program was spelled out in the Korean constitution, and the land-reform act is now law. But these reforms have not been carried out because of the war, Rhee claims...
...Assembly is as ineffective as Rhee himself. Its members do not understand their own responsibilities and have little knowledge of parliamentary procedure. They spend most of their time wrangling with Rhee over insignificant issues, forcing major political and economic problems into the background...
Whether or not Rhee is corrupt and reactionary is not the main issue with the Korean voters. The major difficulty is that his government is impotent. Its naive, clumsy attempts to feed, clothe, and house the Korean people have failed. Such a leadership vacuum cannot last much longer. If Rhee and his faction bide their time until pro-Communist reformers are voted into office, then the objectives of the UN forces in Korea will have been lost...