Syngman Rhee

Syngman Rhee , 1875-1965, Korean statesman, president of the Republic of Korea (1948-60). Early an advocate of Korean independence, he led a demonstration against the Japanese in 1897 and was condemned to life imprisonment but was released (1904) under an amnesty. Rhee went to the United States, where he studied at Harvard and Princeton (Ph.D., 1910), and after returning to Korea went to Hawaii for a time. In 1919 a group of conspirators for Korean independence made him president of a government in exile, and he never ceased working for the cause. After World War II he became a leader in South Korea under the U.S. occupation, and in 1948 he became first president of the Republic of Korea, which claimed the right to rule over all Korea. When, on July 27, 1953, a truce was reached in the Korean War, Rhee maintained that all Korea should be united. Reelected to his fourth term in 1960, Rhee was accused of rigging the election. Student-led demonstrations protesting the election and government corruption soon led to riots and in May, 1960, Rhee was forced out of office and into exile in Hawaii.

Bibliography: See biography by R. C. Allen (1960).

Syngman Rhee (b. 26 Apr. 1875, d. 19 July 1965). President of the Republic of Korea (South Korea) 1948–60 Born Yi Sung-man in P'yongsan (Hawanghae Province), he became a nationalist activist while still a student, joining the Independence Club on its formation in 1896. After imprisonment for an alleged attempt to overthrow the monarchy (1898–1904) he studied in the USA to gain a doctorate degree in political science at Princeton. Briefly in Korea 1910–12, he was expelled by the Japanese colonial authorities, and then founded a Korean nationalist society in the USA. In 1919, he was named in absentia Premier (then President) of the Provisional Government of Korea in Shanghai, a body set up by nationalist opponents of the Japanese colonial regime. This position, as well as his connections with the USA, predestined him to lead US-occupied South Korea to statehood, becoming its first President. In office, he relied heavily on US support to fend off various Communist insurgencies, before almost succumbing to North Korean invasion in the Korean War. Never relinquishing his claim to represent all of Korea, he was bitterly opposed to the end of the war and the USA's de facto acceptance of the country's division. While the first years of his leadership were thus taken up with the threat of a Communist takeover, after 1953 attention shifted to his own corruption, and his attempts to erode the constitution in order to extend his powers. He suppressed all forms of popular protest, until this became impossible in the wake of the fraudulent 1960 presidential elections. He resigned and went into exile in Hawaii, where he died.