Word: rhees
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...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...
Government, as Rhee practices it, is almost a one-man job. He has a few trusted cabinet ministers, such as Acting Premier Paik To Chin and Information Minister Clarence Ryee. Below them are a number of lesser ministers and government officials who cautiously conform to Rhee's wishes. Government favors can be obtained only through Rhee and this circle of his intimates. All foreign exchange allocations for more than $500, for example, must be personally approved by Rhee. Imposed to ensure the strictest honesty in government operations, this control has its drawbacks: important decisions inevitably await the President...
Sovereign Trust. In pursuing this policy, Rhee may well be moved by real distrust of Korea's manipulating politicians. But there is something more to his actions than counter-manipulation: his passionate belief that he governs by sovereign right conferred on him by the Korean people. This belief he clearly demonstrated in his row with the National Assembly last year. According to Korea's five-year-old constitution, the Assembly elects the President. Rhee's term being about to expire, the Assembly wished to exercise its constitutional right. Since the majority were opposed to Rhee, this meant...
...Rhee insisted that the President should be chosen by vote of the people. The Assembly said no. Rhee declared martial law, had his cops arrest twelve Assemblymen, charged them with being Communist plotters, and sent a mob of his supporters to storm the Assembly chamber. Aspirant Chang took refuge in a U.S. Army hospital. Rhee threatened to pull out a couple of ROK divisions from the line to back up his police, hesitated only when his good friend, Eighth Army Commander Van Fleet, flew to Pusan and told the President that this would mean an open rupture with...