Word: rhee
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...ends by a partitioning, Rhee will have to adjust the South Korean economy so that it can get along without its "better half"--North Korea. During their 40-year occupation, the Japanese made Korea into a prosperous satellite. North Korea became an industrial area, while the South was mostly agricultural. Since 1945 when an Allied military agreement established the partition, South Koreans have lacked sufficient consumer goods, water power, coal, and fertilizer...
...word "corrupt" is often applied to Rhee, yet his enemies never disclose specific examples of corruption. The nearest thing to proof appeared in a Reuters dispatch from Pusan on May 11. On that day, Vice President Lee resigned due to "big-scale embezzlement involving government officials and military officers...
...Rhee's critics call him "reactionary" by citing the wealthy men and old nobility who support him. Most of the Rhee faction are septuagenarians; American-educated Rhee is 76, and Lee's age was reported as 83 when he resigned. Rhee is self-assured, stubborn, and dictatorial. He has been actively heading the Korean independence movement since 1919 when he was elected President of the Korean Republic in exile. (Korea was handed over to Japan as a bribe for recognition of American interests in the Philippines...
Communism is Rhee's worst enemy. He has reduced all issues into the one question of combating Communism. With the three million North Korean refugees came many Communist agents and organizers who have infiltrated into the army, police, schools, and government offices. When 11 Communist newspapers suddenly appeared, Rhee closed them. Before the war, when certain legislators petitioned the UN Korean Commission to remove all American military forces from the nation, Rhee summarily imprisoned them. From the comparative safety of the United States, critics of Rhee have been concerned over the absence of basic freedoms in Korea, but Rhee justifies...
...Rhee's dictatorial tactics are misleading. After a personal interview, a "Reporter" magazine writer asserts, "By both public acclaim and by moral conviction, he is a champion of democracy . . . I could not help wondering whether he might . . . be serving out his last year as a front for a clique of army and police officers . . . he showed many signs of his advanced years. Now, when his dream for a united Korea may be shattered by peace negotiations or by what he would consider an untimely end to the war with he Communists, he is determined to lay down...