Chapter 5 Syngman Rhee's Years in Exile

During Kim's guerrilla days, the indomitable Rhee continued to toss the offices of Western dignitaries, hoping Americans would recognize him as North Korea's legitimate leader.His time is split between his school in Hawaii and visits to Washington, where his "interim government" also maintains a South Korean commission to the United States.Despite the almost unanimous cold reception he has received, Rhee still believes that "our efforts must be focused on the United States, at least for now."One sympathizes with the old man's zeal and questions his realism, as the United States has said it has little interest in extending aid to a vassal state that most U.S. citizens can't find on maps. The "Los Angeles Times" may be displeased with the fact that Syngman Rhee insisted on being interviewed every time he came to Los Angeles, and published a report titled "Sungman Rhee, the Failed North Korea", the first sentence said: "Dr. Syngman Rhee, the leader of the failed cause in the East... is in Los Angeles today, meeting with Chinese businessmen and politicians, in an attempt to get their assistance in the freedom movement in North Korea." Syngman Rhee even turned to the Soviet Union at one point, and he told the Soviet ambassador in Paris He emphasized the need for a united front on the Asian continent to counter the growing Japanese threat.Syngman Rhee managed to secure a Soviet visa and embarked on a journey to Moscow, only to be told that it had all gone wrong and that he had to leave the Soviet Union immediately.

This trip really brought Syngman Lee a great harvest.Before taking the train to Moscow, he happened to be sitting next to Francesca Donna at the dinner table one evening.She was the eldest of three daughters of a wealthy Viennese factory owner.A strict follower of the rules, Mr Turner taught his daughters "the fundamentals of business management and manly self-reliance" and emphasized self-responsibility.Francesca has a resolute face and blond curly hair. She knows a thing or two about international affairs and has read Syngman Rhee's works on North Korea's independence.The two were attracted to each other and fell in love at first sight.Two years later, in 1934, they were married in New York.Since then, she has become Syngman Rhee's wife, secretary, housewife and like-minded person, "the warmest supporter, advisor and caregiver".

By the end of the 1930s, it was clear that Syngman Rhee was leading a "lost business".Members of his provisional government turned to anti-Japanese violent attacks and guerrilla warfare, some even defecting to the North Korean People's Army, which Rhee denounced as "communists and heretics"; others collaborated with the Chinese Communists.In the words of the friendly biographer Oliver: His policy of recovering his lost country by appealing to Western interests and goodwill appears bankrupt.His leadership has never impressed the American officials he was trying to woo.Year after year, as his plans came to nothing, his followers began to fall apart.

Even Rhee's friends have come to call him a stubborn, difficult old man, clinging to his notorious tactics for some overt or implicit personal gain. When World War II began, Rhee moved back to Washington and lived in a small house overlooking the National Zoo.There he "listened to the roar of the tiger and the roar of the lion ... with a depressing sense of sympathy".Shortly after Pearl Harbor, he visited the State Department and asked Stanley Hornbeck, director of Far Eastern Affairs, to recognize his "interim government" as the legitimate North Korean regime.The clichés about "fighting Japan" certainly didn't work anymore, and Hornbeck bluffed, babbled, and finally ignored him, as if he were a commoner wandering in from the street.Later, Assistant Secretary of State Adolph Burr told Syngman Rhee in an oblique and formal letter that the United States did not currently intend to recognize the "legitimate" governments claimed by exile groups in countries involved in the war.All in all, let's win this war first, and then tackle the politics.

Syngman Rhee even lost the support of the majority in the "provisional government". In 1942, the "provisional government" voted to remove him from the presidency and elected Jin Jiu, who had taken political asylum in China, to succeed him.Kim Koo, a moderate, wanted to form a "congress of all revolutionary organizations," including even the communist Korean National Revolutionary Party. At the end of 1942, Hornbeck abruptly informed Syngman Rhee that the State Department believed that he was completely unknown in North Korea, and that the Provisional Government was nothing more than "a self-organized club within an exile group with a limited number of members."Syngman Rhee is obviously not someone the US government likes.

Meanwhile, the Korean communists fought the Japanese in the ice and snow of "Manchuria."