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On March 1, 1919, people gathered throughout Korea to hear the Declaration of Independence read, to wave their forbidden Korean flags and to shout "Mansei." Then they were supposed to disperse quietly and go home. In many places they never got a chance to disperse quietly. Japanese troops charged into crowds, shooting, swinging swords and mutilating their victims with firemen's hooks. In the bloody week of Japanese "mopping up" operations, it was estimated that 200,000 Koreans had been arrested, 7,000 killed.
The "Passive Revolution" earned Koreans little foreign sympathy; but it strengthened the determination of Korean patriots. Late in 1919 independence leaders from Korea and from Korean communities in exile gathered in Shanghai. Rhee, who feared that Chinese police might collar him to earn the $300,000 price placed by the Japanese on his head, was smuggled into Shanghai's International Settlement in a coffin. There he helped establish the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea, became its first President.
Conferences & Croquet. In the next 20 years Syngman Rhee's life fell into the dreary, frustrating round of most exiled politicians. He attended international conferences vainly trying to win recognition for Korea. (The U.S. Government blocked his attendance at Versailles Treaty meetings and at later disarmament conferences, because his presence might have embarrassed the Japanese.) He quarreled with other exiled Korean politicians. (Rhee was for continued passive resistance; other leaders favored violent action.) By World War II, the Provisional Government was almost defunct and Rhee turned over the Korean central agency in China to Kim Koo, Korea's master political assassin.*
In 1934 Rhee married Franziska Donner, an Austrian whom he had met while attending a League of Nations meeting in Geneva. Twenty years younger than Rhee, Franziska was attractive and chirrupy. She managed efficiently her impractical husband's finances. Said Rhee in 1941, "When I married a foreign lady, my family was very displeased, but they found out it was a perfect marriage." At parties, however, Rhee has been heard to tell Mrs. Rhee, "Now hush. You have talked enough."
In 1939 Rhee and Franziska moved to Washington, where Rhee acted as U.S. representative of the Provisional Government and arbiter of all Korean activities in the U.S. They lived simply, bought a twelve-room stucco house on 16th Street only after advisers suggested that it would be a good idea to have a reasonably impressive establishment. Rhee, who drank no Western liquors and smoked only an occasional cigarette, avoided Washington's cocktail party set. Most of his time was spent in attempts to interest the State Department in the Provisional Government and Korean independence. Even after World War II began, the U.S. remained stonily indifferent. When Rhee mailed his credentials to the State Department shortly after Pearl Harbor, he was asked to come and take them away again.