Legacies of War

Elliott, Oliver

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-76023-0_8

Legacies of War

Oliver Elliott²

Chapter
First Online: 21 April 2018

324 Accesses

Abstract

Oliver Elliott reveals how, following the armistice, Syngman Rhee used the threat of resuming the war to maintain his status in the public eye while building support amongst the American public for an all-out conflict with the communist world. His state visit to the United States in the summer of 1954 further cemented South Korea’s position as a bulwark against communism in Asia. Elliott explores how Rhee was able to remove the last remaining constraints on his rule with almost no comment or criticism in the United States.

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Notes

1.
William Stueck, The Korean War: An International History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995); Rosemary Foot, A Substitute for Victory: The Politics of Peacemaking at the Korean Armistice Talks (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990); Henry W. Brands, “The Dwight D. Eisenhower Administration, Syngman Rhee, and the ‘Other’ Geneva Conference of 1954,” Pacific Historical Review 56, no. 1 (1987), 59–85.
2.
Stueck and Yi, “‘An Alliance Forged in Blood’: The American Occupation of Korea, the Korean War, and the US–South Korean Alliance,” 206.
3.
Casey, Selling the Korean War: Propaganda, Politics, and Public Opinion in the United States, 1950–1953, 352–4.
4.
Eddleman memo, 1 June 1953, FRUS 1952–1954, 15 (1), 1126–8.
5.
“Rhee Called Great Patriot by Knowland,” Washington Post, 28 June 1953.
6.
“Text of the Dulles Address to the American Legion Convention,” New York Times, 3 September 1953.
7.
The AFK’s first chairman was President Eisenhower’s brother, Milton Eisenhower. President Eisenhower publicly supported the AFK’s fundraising campaigns and, in April 1954, invited Rusk and senior industrialists for an AKF press event at the White House in support of their “Help Korea Trains” project: Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Statement by the President on the Fund-Raising Campaign of the American-Korean Foundation,” 5 May 1953, Public Papers of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, The American Presidency Project, online http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=9835; Memo for the President, 8 April 1954, Box 2, Anne Whitman Diary Series, Dwight D. Eisenhower Papers (Ann Whitman File), Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library.
8.
Draft of Eisenhower to Dulles, 31 July 1953, Box 1, Anne Whitman Diary Series, Dwight D. Eisenhower Papers (Ann Whitman File), Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library.
9.
When Secretary of State Dulles publicly announced the program in early August, critics accused him of implying American soldiers would be used as “labor battalions”: Joseph Hearst, “White House Denies Plan to Use G.I. Labour in Korea,” Chicago Daily Tribune, 4 August 1953.
10.
Leonard W. Mayo, “2,000,000 Reasons to Help South Korea,” New York Times, 2 August 1953; Eric Pace, “Howard Rusk, 88, Dies; Medical Pioneer,” New York Times, 5 November 1989.
11.
John P. Lewis, Reconstruction and Development in South Korea (Washington D.C.: National Planning Association, 1955), 1.
12.
For more on US —ROK diplomacy and the Geneva Conference, see Brands, “The Dwight D. Eisenhower Administration, Syngman Rhee, and the ‘Other’ Geneva Conference of 1954.”
13.
For more on Eisenhower and rollback, see Robert R. Bowie and Richard H. Immerman, Waging Peace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 76–7.
14.
Donald Bruce Johnson, ed., National Party Platforms, Vol. I: 1840–1956 (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1978), 497–9.
15.
Rhee to Oliver, 25 February 1954, The Korean Pacific Press, Public Relations, Syngman Rhee Papers, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
16.
Rhee to Van Fleet, 16 April 1953, Box 77, James Van Fleet Papers, George C. Marshall Foundation.
17.
Rhee to Van Fleet, 28 December 1953, Box 77, James Van Fleet Papers, George C. Marshall Foundation.
18.
James Van Fleet, “25 Divisions for the Cost of One,” Reader’s Digest, February 1954.
19.
Van Fleet to Rhee, 21 January 1954, Box 77, James Van Fleet Papers, George C. Marshall Foundation.
20.
Rhee continued to believe that journalists such as David Lawrence and Roy Howard had to be made to come to South Korea to see the situation for themselves: Rhee to Van Fleet, 15 March 1954, Official Correspondence, President Rhee’s Correspondence, Syngman Rhee Papers, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
21.
William J. Jorden, “Complex Issues Still Face Rhee,” New York Times, 13 April 1954.
22.
Rhee to Morin, 3 March 1954, Press Relations, Public Relations, Syngman Rhee Papers, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
23.
Relman Morin, “Blue-blooded Rhee Remains a Revolutionary,” Washington Post, 7 March 1954.
24.
While Oliver reached out to some of Rhee’s critics during the early stages of writing the book, the final version was carefully checked and edited by Rhee: Oliver to Yong-jeung Kim, 21 March 1949, Box 1, Yong-jeung Kim Papers, Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University in the City of New York; Chapter Manuscripts for Syngman Rhee: The Man behind the Myth, Box 1, Robert T. Oliver Papers, 1949–1970, Special Collections Library, Pennsylvania State University.
25.
Oliver, Syngman Rhee: The Man Behind the Myth, 321–30. The South Korean government also published a compendium of essays by Rhee’s American supporters celebrating his life and devotion to fighting communism: Taehan Min’guk Kongbusil, ed., Syngman Rhee Through Western Eyes (Seoul: Office of Public Information, 1954).
26.
South Korean publicity materials often compared Rhee to historic American presidents. As early as 1950, it had been common for the press to describe Rhee as the “George Washington of Korea”: AP, “Rhee Expected to Keep Grip on Korea Congress,” Chicago Daily Tribune, 18 June 1950. Rhee regularly referred to Abraham Lincoln’s declaration that a nation cannot survive “half slave and half free” in speeches prepared for American audiences: Text of speech read out at launch of the America-Korean Foundation’s ten million dollar campaign, Press Relations, Public Relations, Syngman Rhee papers, Woodrow Wilson Center.
27.
Robert Aura Smith, “His Life is Korea,” New York Times, 25 April 1954. A second review in the Times by the paper’s book review editor was much more skeptical, arguing that “no politician ever had a less critical or more fervently admiring biographer than Syngman Rhee has in Mr Oliver”: Orville Prescott, “Books of the Times,” New York Times, 27 April 1954.
28.
Thomas E. J. Keena, “Korea and Syngman Rhee,” Hartford Courant, 9 May 1954; Harold T. Fisher, “Korea’s Selfless Fanatic,” Saturday Review, 5 June 1954.
29.
Walter Simmons, “Rough and Ready Rhee, Korea’s Boss,” Chicago Daily Tribune, 13 June 1954.
30.
Mark Gayn, “What Price Rhee? Profile of a Despot,” Nation, 13 March 1954.
31.
Oliver, Syngman Rhee and American Involvement in Korea; 1942–1960, 438–41.
32.
For more on how Indochina came to dominate the conference, see Frederick Logevall, Embers of War (New York: Random House, 2012), 549–613.
33.
William J. Jorden, “Police ‘Pressure’ in Korea Charged,” New York Times, 17 May 1954; “Election in Korea,” New York Times, 22 May 1954.
34.
Dulles to Rhee, 18 June 1954, FRUS 1952–1954, 15 (1), 1854.
35.
Briggs to Dulles, 10 July 1954, FRUS 1952–1954, 15 (2), 1054.
36.
“President Rhee’s Visit,” Washington Post, 17 July 1954; “Dr. Syngman Rhee Visits the President,” Baltimore Sun, 27 July 1954.
37.
Walter Trohan, “Rhee Returns to Capital, Site of Exile,” Chicago Daily Tribune, 25 July 1954.
38.
Edward T. Folliard, “Rhee Welcomed to Washington, Minces No Words on Korea,” Washington Post, 27 July 1954.
39.
Oliver, Syngman Rhee and American Involvement in Korea; 1942–1960, 447.
40.
AP, “Text of Rhee’s Address to Congress,” New York Times, 28 July 1954.
41.
AP, “Rhee Urges U.S. Attack Red China,” Los Angeles Times, 29 July 1954.
42.
“President Rhee’s Speech,” New York Times, 29 July 1954.
43.
Halberstam, The Powers That Be, 256–9.
44.
Constantine Brown, “Merits of Rhee Talk,” Washington Evening Star, 30 July 1954; David Lawrence, “History May Prove Rhee Right in His Grave Warning,” New York Herald Tribune, 30 July 1954.
45.
Murray Schumach, “Rhee Hailed and Honored Here, Begs Free World to Fight Reds,” New York Times, 3 August 1954.
46.
“Rhee Calls for Shooting War with Communism,” Los Angeles Times, 7 August 1954.
47.
Dulles to Robinson, 31 July 1954, Box 8, John Foster Dulles Papers 1951–1959, JFD Chronological Series, Eisenhower Presidential Library.
48.
Oliver, Syngman Rhee and American Involvement in Korea; 1942–1960, 450.
49.
“The Singular Syngman Rhee,” Wall Street Journal, 30 July 1954.
50.
Calhoun to DOS, 22 July 1954, FRUS 1952–1954, 15 (2), 1797–9.
51.
See, for instance, AP, “So. Korean Police Alerted as Nation Goes to the Polls,” Chicago Daily Tribune, 20 May 1954.
52.
Henry S. Hayward, “Rhee Swings Whip Hand Over Korea Elections,” Christian Science Monitor, 7 May 1954.
53.
AP, “Korea Argues Enabling Vote,” Baltimore Sun, 29 November 1954; “Rhee Forces Win Assembly Battle,” New York Times, 29 November 1954.
54.
Rhee Address to New York Times Luncheon, 3 August 1954, Public Relations, Syngman Rhee Papers, Woodrow Wilson Center.
55.
Rhee to Van Fleet, 16 April 1953, Box 77, James Van Fleet Papers, George C. Marshall Foundation.
56.
John Randolph to Alan Gould, 26 August 1954, Seoul, Foreign Bureau Correspondence 1954, AP Archives. The story was reported in an AP dispatch: Jim Becker, “With ROK Politics,” 27 April 1954, copy in Seoul, Foreign Bureau Correspondence 1954, AP Archives.
57.
Donald M. Wilson, The First 78 Years (Bloomington, IN: Xlibris Corp, 2004), 93; “One Old Man Against the Truce,” Life, 22 June 1953.
58.
Randolph to Gould, 26 August 1954, Seoul, Foreign Bureau Correspondence 1954, AP Archives.
59.
“Censorship Idiocy,” Editor & Publisher, 17 April 1954.
60.
“Korea Censorship Ends,” New York Times, 2 November 1954; James Reston, “Rhee Curbs U.S. Radio,” New York Times, 25 October 1954.
61.
John Osborne to Beshoar, 12 January 1953, Time Inc. Dispatches from Time magazine correspondents: First Series, 1942–1955, Houghton Library, Harvard College Library.
62.
Frank Gibney, “Free Man’s Burden,” Harper’s, 1 February 1954.
63.
“The Walnut,” Time, 9 March 1953.
64.
Apart from Mark Gayn’s review of Rhee’s biography, the Nation published just three articles relating to South Korea between 1954 and 1959. Izzy Stone , noted author of the fiercely anti-Rhee The Hidden History of the Korean War (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1952), published only one article on South Korea in his influential left-wing newsletter I.F. Stone’s Weekly during this same period.
65.
Frank Gibney , “Free Man’s Burden,” Harper’s, 1 February 1954.
66.
In 1959, two liberal newspapers, the Washington Post and the Baltimore Sun, published editorials criticizing the Rhee regime for its repression of journalists and members of the opposition: “One-Party Korea?,” Washington Post, 9 January 1959; “Struggle in Korea,” Baltimore Sun, 30 January 1959.
67.
In 1960, Korean American journalist K. W. Lee wrote to the Chicago Daily News to praise Beech for his role in bringing the dark side of the Rhee regime to the attention of the American public: K. W. Lee to the editor, 25 April 1960, Box 24, Chicago Daily News, Field Enterprises Collection, Newberry Library. Beech’s editors at the Chicago Daily News referred to the April Revolution as Beech’s revolution: Marsh to Beech, 10 March 1961, Box 24, Chicago Daily News, Field Enterprises Collection, Newberry Library.
68.
“Two Presidents Re-elected,” New York Times, 22 March 1960.
69.
For more on the background of the April revolution and the failure of the Chang Myon government, see Han, The Failure of Democracy in South Korea.

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Independent Scholar, Barcelona, Spain
Oliver Elliott

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Elliott, O. (2018). Legacies of War. In: The American Press and the Cold War. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76023-0_8

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76023-0_8
Published: 21 April 2018
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-76022-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-76023-0
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