Unopposed, 84-year-old Syngman Rhee won a sweeping fourth term victory—even though perhaps 10% of the voters cast their ballots for his only opponent, who had died a month before.
But there still had to be a get-out-the-vote campaign to elect Rhee's running mate, ailing Lee Ki Poong, who has difficulty walking and speaking because of a nervous disorder, and did not make a single campaign speech. So Rhee's Liberals set to work. Election day brought many complaints of voter intimidation and open ballot-fixing, of six-foot high boards outside some polling places showing voters how to mark their ballots for Rhee and Lee. Green-shirted members of Rhee's Anti-Communist Youth League lounged outside the booths as voters arrived, often in organized teams of three (so that the man in the middle could make sure that the other two voted correctly). The result was a decisive victory (76%) for Invalid Lee over U.S.-educated (Manhattan College) John M. Chang who had beaten Lee easily in the last election.
Tension ran high in many areas, and in the normally peaceful town of Masan voting was still in progress when a disgruntled crowd raised the cry, "Dirty polls!" It was like a spark in dry straw. Suddenly, 200 angry citizens raced to a police station, set it afire, fled with captured weapons. Another mob, 2,500 strong, gathered before the town hall, stoned firemen, who vainly attempted to hook up their hoses to fight back. After tear gas failed, scores of police arrived from nearby Pusan. One lowered his carbine and fired into the screaming crowd, a signal that led other cops to do the same. When it was all over, at least ten were dead, some of them schoolchildren, scores were wounded and hundreds were pushed into police vans and hauled off to jail.
Outmaneuvered at the polls, the opposition Democrats stomped out en masse when the National Assembly met to hear the formal election results, and darkly talked of challenging the "act of theft" in court. But in Syngman Rhee's Korea they cannot hope to do any better in the courts.