Korea's Syngman Rhee by Richard C. Allen

Author:Richard C. Allen
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4629-1809-6
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing

11: Survival of

the Fittest

THE WAR itself had become a stalemate. The U.N. comeback following the initial Chinese offensive had removed forever the threat of a second Pusan beachhead. On the other hand, the Eighth Army was unable to break through the Communist lines north of Seoul. Once more the Korean War posed a problem for peacemakers: was it a war to liberate Korea, or could the Allies legitimately settle for less than total victory? Himself a member of the MacArthur school, Van Fleet chaffed under directives which put severe restrictions on even local Allied offensives. Yet both the United States and the United Nations were committed to seek a settlement in the negotiations at Panmunjom, and Washington was extremely reluctant either to risk unnecessary casualties or to take military action which might not be supported by its Allies.

In the armistice negotiations themselves, progress was excruciatingly slow. Scarcely had agreement been reached on a military demarcation line when the Communists created an impasse on the issue of prisoners of war. Figures released in December 1951 had revealed that the Communists were prepared to return only a fraction of the total number of prisoners they were known to have captured. The United Nations Command demanded that the Communists account for prisoners beyond the 11,559 they were willing to return, most of whom had presumably died in captivity. But if nothing could be done for these Allied prisoners, the record of Communist barbarity served to stiffen the Allied determination that no Communist prisoner who refused repatriation would be forced to return to communism.

In South Korea, however, both the stalemated war and the truce negotiations were secondary in the eyes of many Koreans to certain matters of domestic politics-—all of which concerned the reelection prospects of Syngman Rhee.

The constitution under which Rhee took office in 1948 was one which he had helped to draft, and it incorporated many features of a strong executive which he desired. But many of the features which he found useful, such as the emergency police powers which he used so freely, had been obtained through concessions to the National Assembly; one of these had been that the Assembly would have the right to elect the president. Ever since 1950, when the elections which he had held only reluctantly went against him, Rhee’s support in the Assembly had dwindled. By the end of the following year, his prospects for re-election by the Assembly were regarded as nil, a fact which was a source of great comfort to his enemies.

Although Rhee periodically stated that he was not a candidate for re-election, his activities as early as the spring of 1951 belied these professions. In April 1951, he departed from his previous aloofness from partisan politics in directing the formation of an administration political party to be headed by himself. Rhee did so with obvious reluctance-—his public statements continued to indicate that he regarded himself as above politics—but he appears to have recognized the need for a political vehicle behind which to mass his popular and organizational assets.

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