Syngman Rhee

Biography

Syngman Rhee was born in Hwanghae province in 1875 and grew up in Seoul with a classical Confucian education. In 1894 he entered the Methodist Pai Chai School, where he became a Christian, and he joined reform and independence groups such as the Independence Club, editing early Korean newspapers. Accused of plotting against King Gojong, he was imprisoned in 1899 and held, and tortured, until 1904.

On his release he went to the United States, where in 1905 he pleaded with Theodore Roosevelt for Korean independence, and he took degrees at George Washington University, Harvard and, in 1910, a doctorate at Princeton. After a brief return to Japanese-ruled Korea he settled in Hawaii in 1913, running a school, a magazine and a church.

After the March First Movement of 1919 he was named president of the Korean Provisional Government in Shanghai, but disputes within the movement ended in his impeachment in 1925. He kept lobbying in the United States for Korean independence through the Second World War.

Rhee returned to Korea in 1945, became speaker of the new National Assembly in 1948 and on 20 July 1948 was elected the first president of South Korea. He led the country through the Korean War and refused to sign the 1953 armistice. His rule became increasingly authoritarian; after the disputed elections of March 1960 the April Revolution forced him to resign, and he spent his last years in exile in Honolulu, where he died in 1965.