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While he lived in Washington, Rhee spent most of his leisure time outdoors. He took great pleasure in mowing his lawn, spent many a Sunday afternoon in a rented rowboat fishing the Potomac. Aside from an occasional game of tennis with his wife, his only active sport was croquet, also a favorite game of former Secretary of State Cordell Hull, who had so stubbornly ignored the claims of Rhee's government. One afternoon in 1943 Rhee interrupted a croquet game with some friends to tune in a broadcast of the Cairo Conference communique. He listened quietly to the communique, in which a promise that "Korea shall become free" was marred, he felt, by the weasel words "in due course." Said Rhee to his host when the broadcast was over: "What a pity I have not been playing croquet with Cordell Hull."
U.S. indifference changed Rhee's character, left him bitter and disillusioned. Convinced that most of the world was hostile to his cause, he fell back upon a small circle of friends and advisers. Chief among them was Washington Lawyer John W. Staggers, who had for many years acted as an agent of the Korean government. Staggers handled Rhee's income, which consisted largely of contributions from Koreans in the U.S. When the contributions were small, many Washingtonians believe, Staggers added to them from his own pocket.
Bitterness & the Boy Scouts. By the end of World War II, Syngman Rhee had little left of the pacifist idealism which had motivated him in 1919, had acquired a bitter and intimate understanding of the Korean proverb "When whales fight, the shrimp are eaten." Bypassing the Secretary of State, he persuaded the War Department to return him to liberated Korea simply "as a private person." General John Hodge, who commanded U.S. occupation forces, saw in Rhee a possible rallying point, a focus which might bring order out of South Korea's chaos. When Hodge led Rhee onto a platform in Seoul, 50,000 Koreans burst into tears and cheers at the sight of their legendary leader.
In the next few months Rhee proved far more of a catalyst than Hodge had bargained for, and not at all what the general had wanted. At the time of Rhee's return, 205 Korean political parties were registered with U.S. Military Government. Among them were the Forlorn Hope Society, the Supporters' Union for All Korean Political Actors, the Getting Ready Committee for the Return of the Provisional Korean Government and the Korean National Youth Movement, which called itself "the new Boy Scouts." ("The new Boy Scouts" soon had to be curbed as a menace to law & order.)
Because most Koreans despise political parties, Rhee refused to become affiliated with any group, although the National Party follows his guidance and supports his policies. But he stubbornly insisted on two points: 1) Korea must be independent, i.e., free of both Russian and U.S. interference; 2) Korea must be united, i.e., the North Korean Communists must be thrown out and the whole country united behind Syngman Rhee. Rhee's obdurate stand in effect divided South Koreans into two parties, one made up of people who agreed with Syngman Rhee, the other of people who, along with General Hodge and the U.S. State Department, hoped that Korea could be united by a compromise with the Communists.