Word: rhee
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Vigilant Momma. In 1932, while attempting to put Korea's case before an indifferent League of Nations in Geneva, Rhee met Francesca Maria Barbara Donner, 34, the daughter of a family of Viennese iron merchants. Two years later they were married in a Methodist ceremony in New York. The Rhees live in a modest mansion on the rolling hillside behind Seoul, only 30 miles south of the front. In their household Madame Rhee maintains constant vigilance...
...woman with greying hair and bright hazel eyes, she has lost none of her Viennese animation. Her billowing dresses are tailored for an Austrian peasant effect. She talks lightly of Washington society, Hong Kong social intrigue, New York or Paris fashions. But the observant visitor is not misled: Madame Rhee is a woman attuned to politics and power. She is present, or in the background, of most vital meetings. When she and Rhee met, their common language was English. Today she professes to have forgotten the German of her youth, and her English is so much better than Rhee...
Never Underestimate . . . The extent to which Madame Rhee influences Korean politics is a matter of fascinated conjecture for all who have seen the Rhees together. Some have even gone so far as to say that Madame Rhee is the power behind the presidency, but the truth seems to be that the couple act in concert; in her own right Madame Rhee is a clever, strong, ever-watchful helpmate. At home and in politics it is "the Rhees," a political relationship like that which once existed between Madame and Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek...
...Rhee's day begins at 6 with a Western-style breakfast of toast, coffee, ham & eggs, after which the President likes to walk his Chin-do dog through the garden. He then goes through the newspapers with his secretary and scans reports from his embassies and ministries. Last week he received a letter written in blood purporting to be Acting Premier Paik To Chin's confession that he was a Communist. Rhee spotted the letter as a fraud, and investigation disclosed that it had been written in chicken blood by the madame of a Seoul tea house...
...freezing Korean battlefront, stood stiffly to attention during the playing of the Korean or U.S. national anthems, the wind winnowing his thin white hair, his battered grey felt hat clutched to his breast. But on other occasions, particularly when he is tired, the aged President will droop. Whenever Madame Rhee thinks that a visitor has over stayed, she will interrupt with some such remark as "Poppa, do you haff coffee or tea this afternoon?" Hearing her voice, Rhee's thousand-wrinkled face will crease into a smile. In private the President calls Madame Rhee "Momma," and in recent months...