For the second time in four years, death removed President Syngman Rhee's only opponent in mid-campaign—and so assured Rhee's unopposed re-election for a fourth term as South Korea's President.
Dr. Chough Pyong Ok, 65, Rhee's Democratic Party opponent, died suddenly last week in Washington's Walter Reed Hospital of coronary thrombosis following an abdominal operation. For Rhee, it was a lucky thing that the death occurred in Washington, since his opponents could not charge him with having engineered it.
Democrat Chough was a disciple of Rhee's from 1911—when they met in the Seoul Y.M.C.A.—until 1952, when Rhee had Chough beaten up and thrown into jail for 27 days. It had been Rhee, one of Woodrow Wilson's favorite students at Princeton, who persuaded Chough's father to send the 16-year-old boy to study in the U.S. Taking a Ph.D. at Columbia, Chough returned to Korea to teach economics and to preach anti-Japanese nationalism. The Japanese jailed him for five years in the '30s.
Helping Out. Rhee himself, an exile for 33 years, returned to Korea after the Japanese defeat in 1945. Chough was by then a leader of armed guerrilla bands, and suspicious of both Rhee and the conquering Americans. But he decided to side with Rhee, and was appointed director of national police by the U.S. Military Government. Rhee made him ambassador to the U.N. in 1949 and his Interior Minister in 1950. But Chough criticized Rhee's release of thousands of North Korean prisoners in defiance of U.N. orders. For this, Chough was bloodily beaten by hoodlums in Pusan.
Hitting Back. Returning to Seoul, Chough had to sleep in a different place each night because goons were again seeking him. Finally they caught up with him, clubbed him and tossed him down a flight of stairs. Rhee then jailed him. In the 1956 elections, Chough backed Rhee's opposition. Presidential Candidate Patrick Henry Shinicky died of a cerebral hemorrhage ten days before the election, but the vice presidential candidate, John M. Chang, won the vice presidency, to Rhee's disgust. Vice President Chang was subsequently shot by unidentified thugs, then placed under "protective" house arrest. Chough was again severely beaten up, this time in Taegu.
Nominated last November for President, with John M. Chang as his running mate, Chough proclaimed in his harsh, high, cracked voice: "Korea is fed up with one-man rule. I hope to campaign vigorously." But Chough was already a sick man. Last month he flew to Washington for an operation to determine whether he had abdominal cancer. Thereupon Rhee's Liberals advanced the election day two months, to March 15; it is now too late for anyone to enter against Rhee. Rhee's comment on hearing of Chough's death: "John Chang should be delighted that his chief rival is out of the way."
Since the only presidential candidate is 84 years old, the real race is for vice president. Rhee once again is running ailing Assembly Speaker Lee Ki Poong, 63, as his candidate. The Democratic candidate is again Roman Catholic John Chang, 60, who got his education at New York City's Manhattan College.