(See Cover)
After three months as a refugee in his own country, Syngman Rhee, President of the Republic of Korea, had come home to Seoul. He found his official residence littered with the midden of the routed Communist army, including back copies of the Soviet newspaper Izvestia. When the litter had been cleared away, a close inspection of the presidential mansion showed that the Russian civilians billeted there during the Communist occupation had left behind all of Rhee's most valuable and showy possessions. Mrs. Rhee had not fared so well; the Russians, headed north into the winter, had made off with her warmest clothes, including her winter underwear.
Almost as though the war had never been, Syngman Rhee's days last week had returned to their orderly pattern. Up each morning at 6:30, he puttered briefly in his garden before eating a Western-style breakfast—coffee, fruit juice, cereal and eggs. Rhee's guests were offered cigars (Phillies) or Korean cigarettes. Rhee himself seldom smoked, explaining that cigars made him sick; he only smokes them in the privacy of a bathroom. A visitor who had American candy to present was sure of warm thanks. Toward the end of a day, Rhee was visibly weary. The night would not greatly restore him; he has insomnia.
On the tired shoulders of Syngman Rhee rests the hope of a revived and unified Korea. Rhee's strongly anti-Soviet stand had made him a natural propaganda target for the Cominform. Agitation against him had become strong in liberal and labor circles, particularly in France, Australia, Great Britain and India. In the U.S. he had been subjected to the same kind of smear campaign that had turned many an honest but unsuspecting man away from China's Chiang Kaishek. It was true that Syngman Rhee was arbitrary and that he sometimes ran roughshod over the civil rights of his opponents. But he was also
1) a thoroughgoing antiCommunist,
2) Korea's most respected figure, and
3) Korea's fairly elected President and the only man who would stand a chance of being elected to that office again if another vote were taken today. No matter what their opinion of his manners & methods, the U.S. and other U.N. members would have to work with Syngman Rhee.