Word: syngman
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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 hesitated, then replied: "If the people wish it, I will resign." At that moment, twelve years of Korean history -years when the words "Syngman Rhee" and "South Korea" had been virtually synonymous-came to an end, and the students burst into tears...
...resignation, Syngman Rhee himself came to the Lees' room for a private chat with his old friend. When it was over, Lee sent away all but one of his bodyguards. Lee Kang Suk told the guard: "Be around when I do what has to be done, and in case of need, finish me." At 5:40 the next morning, the guard heard shots from Lee's room. When police broke in, they found Lee, his wife and younger son sitting hand in hand on a couch, their heads thrown back by the shock of death. Lying across their...
...Private Citizen. That afternoon Syngman Rhee left the presidential palace for Pear Blossom House, his private residence in Seoul. As his bulletproof Cadillac moved along the two-mile route-at first he had insisted that he wanted to walk, "so as not to use government transportation''-his countrymen once again recalled that, for all his political sins. Syngman Rhee. 85, was nonetheless the father of South Korea's independence. The crowds that two days earlier had been calling for his death began to applaud him. And when he reached Pear Blossom House, where he placidly settled down...
With the ousting of Syngman Rhee, the task of ensuring that South Korea did not slip from autocracy into anarchy fell upon the republic's Acting President and its top soldier. Both are able, honest and widely respected. And both have had personal experience of the arrogant maladministration that brought South Korea to its present pass...