Word: rhees
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Democracy's Price. In conversation Rhee defends his attitude by saying: "The Assembly can be bought by anyone-by anyone." So far, the internal Communist threat in South Korea, except for guerrillas, has been confined to minor sabotage and espionage. But, with a huge Chinese Communist army still in North Korea, the threat is real...
...great strength of Syngman Rhee is his single-minded devotion to his country and its independence. This leaves him with no illusions whatever about Communism. Says Rhee: "It is perfectly clear to me that Communism can be defeated only by war . . . What we must bring about is the one event that the Soviet system cannot survive-a setback, a defeat. It must be a defeat that cannot be concealed from the people of Russia and the satellite countries. If we ever manage that, the system will fall. The people of Russia and the satellites will rise and throw off Communism...
When the peace talks began in Kaesong nearly two years ago, Rhee denounced them as another Communist trick, and added, blusteringly, that if the U.N. were to sign a truce, the South Korean army would advance to the Yalu itself. Rhee's truculence is echoed by many Koreans, and for understandable reasons: without the power resources, the fertilizer factories and the iron mines of North Korea, the republic is doomed to economic mendicancy. When President Eisenhower visited Korea last December, Syngman Rhee insisted that the condition of any settlement must be unification of Korea...
...again during the period when North Korean Reds occupied Seoul, South Korean intellectuals flocked north to the Communists like magpies to a ripe ricefield. For some the change was permanent: they are now entrenched with the Communist government in the north. But a few doubters elected to remain with Rhee's government and see what time would bring. During the past 18 months, those who remained have lost their doubts. In Pusan this week, in a coffee shop lighted by one feebly glowing electric light bulb, a reporter talked with a South Korean newspaperman who had planned originally...
...Long Run. Forty years of Japanese occupation left Korea with few people trained in government. Thus, the Rhee administration rests upon 80,000 fulltime, government-paid national police and some 120,000 volunteer provincial police who are paid by the towns and villages where they work, i.e., about one cop to every 100 population. In many parts of Korea, particularly in the country, police rule constitutes the government. Thus, Rhee is cautious about who controls the police organization, prefers to have two or three factions contending with one another. In the same way, he has never publicly nominated his successor...