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It soon became clear that no compromise was possible. With Rhee's agreement, both the U.S. and U.N. urged that North Korea take part in a nationwide general election. North Korea's Communist leaders refused. Fearing the results of a free election, they turned the 38th parallel into an impassable frontier, thereby economically crippling both halves of Korea.
In 1948 South Korea finally went ahead without the north, held an honest, carefully supervised election under U.N. sponsorship. (On the basis of the relative populations of North and South Korea, it was decided to leave 100 of the 310 seats in the National Assembly vacant—to be filled by North Korean representatives if Korea should be unified.) In the elections a majority of South Koreans voted their support of Syngman Rhee. The Republic of Korea was established and Rhee became its first President.
Woodpiles & War. Almost at once the new President ran into trouble. There were murmurs carefully heated up by the Communists that his 35-year exile had made him a foreigner. Some of his opponents said that he thought in English, not Korean. Others seized on the fact that he wore Korean clothes only for public appearances, preferred to wear Western clothes at home. Audiences at public affairs were irritated by the invariable presence of Rhee's Austrian wife, who speaks only halting Korean. Said one left-winger: "He may be the father of our country, but she can never be its mother."
More serious were Rhee's troubles with the National Assembly. When the Assembly refused to appropriate funds for some of Rhee's government projects, the President lambasted them with a vigor that outdid Truman's gibes at the 80th Congress. Then Rhee unconstitutionally appropriated the funds by executive order. "Why should there be anything between a President and his people," he trumpeted. Occasionally during a conference with rebellious assemblymen, rising anger would drive Rhee out of the presidential mansion to a handy woodpile. Only after he had chopped the woodpile down to size would Rhee come back to the conference, his equanimity temporarily restored.
Some observers believe that the prestige of Rhee's government sank in the months before the North Korean invasion. They cite the result of last May's U.N.-observed election, which had filled the National Assembly with an assortment of independents, many of whom were hostile to Rhee. Both in Korea and abroad, Rhee's opponents called him a lame-duck President, declared that his government was discredited. Other observers believe that Rhee's government was just beginning to hit its stride last June and that the Reds attacked when they did because they could not afford to tolerate the example of an effective, popular anti-Communist government in Asia.