Word: rhees
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Isolated from his people by barbed wire, prowling tanks and stern-faced troops, proud old Syngman Rhee sat in his presidential palace early last week stubbornly clinging to power. He had ordered ailing Vice President-elect Lee Ki Poong to "apologize to the nation.'' But to the swelling demand for his own resignation. Rhee turned a deaf ear. "This time of trouble." he insisted, "strengthens my determination to serve the nation...
...Rhee might still be there if it had not been for one man: General Song Yo Chan (see box), South Korea's hard-driving army chief of staff, whom Rhee had entrusted with the task of enforcing martial law in Seoul and four other restless Korean cities. "I myself believed the students' demands were just." admitted Song late last week. Song was also convinced that unless Rhee gave way, the only way the Korean army could save Rhee's government would be by shooting down students in droves...
Deliberate Man. To avert such a blood bath, Song deliberately set out to jolt Rhee out of the presidency. In three successive interviews, the general hammered at Rhee with heavy hints that if the students rioted again, the Korean army would probably refuse to shoot or even to quell them, and the two U.S. divisions manning the border with North Korea might well be withdrawn from the peninsula. Rhee listened, but temporized...
...seeming ex-schoolteacher who suffers from a progressive, wasting disease. Its effect has become so severe that he now cannot stand alone and his speech is slow and slurred. But his detractors charge that this unimpressive man with the nervous simper controls some of the more unattractive operations of Rhee's high-handed administration. They point to his post as honorary chairman of the green-shirted, blackjack-toting Anti-Communist Youth Corps whose members act as the Liberal Party's strong-arm boys. Critics also charge that Lee has long served as the party's go-between...
...impoverished Seoul family that traces its ancestry back to Korea's ancient Yi dynasty. Lee had devoted most of his adult life to serving Syngman Rhee. Lee first met Rhee in the U.S. soon after graduating from Iowa's now-defunct Tabor College in 1924. When Rhee returned to newly independent Korea in 1945, Lee became his private secretary, grew so close to his idol that three years ago Rhee adopted one of Lee's two sons. He became, successively, mayor of Seoul, Defense Minister and, in 1954, Speaker of the Assembly. Defeated by John Chang...