Word: rhees
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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South Korean Congressmen earn $78 a month and-in the eyes of highhanded old Syngman Rhee-aren't worth even that. Rhee has publicly branded individual legislators as "nincompoops" and "opportunists," and has privately described the Republic's unicameral Assembly as "probably the worst legislative body in the world...
While just about everybody agrees that South Korea Assemblymen are often incompetent and sometimes corrupt. Rhee's anger also stems from the occasional spark of independence that the Assembly shows. Recently Rhee demanded constitutional amendments to give the voters the right to recall Assemblymen by petition and the President the authority to dissolve the Assembly by decree. Though members of Rhee's own Liberal Party fill 96 of the Assembly's 179* seats, the Assembly balked at such drastic pruning of its powers...
...retaliation, Rhee decided to make his constitutional changes the central issue of the May 20 general elections. Of the 96 Liberal Assemblymen up for reelection, he gave official party backing to only 42, and hand-picked most of the other 270 Liberal candidates. All Liberals, whether picked by Rhee or not, were required to sign written pledges promising to vote for the President's constitutional amendments...
With his own party's slate of candidates in good order, Rhee then set out to purge the opposition list of objectionable men. To Home Minister Paik Han Sung he sent a note listing three of the most objectionable: Assembly Chairman P. H. Shinicky, Vice Chairman Cho Bong Am, and former Home Minister Chough Pyung Ok-all members of the Democratic Nationalist Party (DNP). Minister Paik in turn set his remarkably efficient police force to "investigating" Shinicky, Cho and Chough. With election day less than a fortnight away, all three candidates seem to have been effectively eliminated from further...
...fact was that many of the U.S. allies preferred nationwide elections to Rhee's proposed elections for North Korea only. It scarcely mattered. At a Saturday meeting of seven nations called in an attempt to break the deadlock, Molotov vetoed any idea of U.N.-supervised elections anywhere, insisted that in any electoral commission the North Koreans (pop. 5,000,000) get equal representation with South Korea (pop. 20 million)2 points on which the West is determined not to yield...