Word: rhee
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...begun to chafe under the strict, sometimes repressive rule of South Korea's military-dominated government. Last week's convulsions did not amount to a full-scale rebellion or draw a massive government crackdown. But the disturbances recalled the fate of South Korea's first President, Syngman Rhee, who was unseated by massive student demonstrations in 1960. The virulence and ubiquity of the protests were enough to give South Korean leaders a first-rate scare. Said Hyun Hong Choo, a Democratic Justice Party member of the National Assembly: "If the violence continues, it threatens the economy, the national security...
Koreans have a history of student activism that dates back to 1919, when youths led mass demonstrations against the occupying Japanese. That tradition continued unabated after World War II. In 1960 student protests drove President Syngman Rhee from office after twelve years in power. Demonstrations frequently erupted throughout the 1960s and '70s. A student uprising claimed more than 100 lives in 1980 in the city of Kwangju. More recently, some 1,500 protesters were arrested during last October's unrest at Konkuk University. Many were sentenced to up to seven years in prison...
Psychologically, the incident has struck peculiarly Korean sensitivities. Despite Korea's sorry record on human rights, the killing of human beings by government authorities without at least a show of due process has never been acceptable to Koreans, violations of this sensibility caused the downfall of the Rhee government in 1960 and underlie the popular distaste for the Chun regime today. In Korea even more than in the US, it is the Soviet leaders in Moscow who are seen as criminally responsible for the deaths of the passengers of KAL007...
...rebellion against Rhee made the students heroes against a home-grown Korean government. No sooner were they wearing their laurels than they began to flaunt them. During the short-lived second republic under Prime Minister Chang Myon, 1960-61, the young people took the offensive once again. They marched on the National Assembly, invaded it and demanded harsh punishment for miscreants of the Rhee regime...
Some of them also seemed dangerously swayed by fraternal feelers from North Korea; they proposed, among other things, a bilateral conference of students of the two countries. The army, which had stood neutrally by as Rhee was toppled, suspected subversion. On May 16, 1961, a group of officers staged a bloodless, predawn coup against the hapless Chang government. Among the junta's leaders, soon to emerge at the top: Park Chung...