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The great strength of Syngman Rhee is his single-minded devotion to his country and its independence. This leaves him with no illusions whatever about Communism. Says Rhee: "It is perfectly clear to me that Communism can be defeated only by war . . . What we must bring about is the one event that the Soviet system cannot survive—a setback, a defeat. It must be a defeat that cannot be concealed from the people of Russia and the satellite countries. If we ever manage that, the system will fall. The people of Russia and the satellites will rise and throw off Communism; of that I am convinced. But they will never do it unless the fears and weaknesses of the Communist regime are exposed, and this can only be done by a military defeat, not by a political defeat. Our only chance of escaping a third world war is to inflict such a defeat in one of the little wars, perhaps this war."
When the peace talks began in Kaesong nearly two years ago, Rhee denounced them as another Communist trick, and added, blusteringly, that if the U.N. were to sign a truce, the South Korean army would advance to the Yalu itself. Rhee's truculence is echoed by many Koreans, and for understandable reasons: without the power resources, the fertilizer factories and the iron mines of North Korea, the republic is doomed to economic mendicancy. When President Eisenhower visited Korea last December, Syngman Rhee insisted that the condition of any settlement must be unification of Korea.
Oral Opposition. Before the Communists' invasion of South Korea in 1950, and again during the period when North Korean Reds occupied Seoul, South Korean intellectuals flocked north to the Communists like magpies to a ripe ricefield. For some the change was permanent: they are now entrenched with the Communist government in the north. But a few doubters elected to remain with Rhee's government and see what time would bring. During the past 18 months, those who remained have lost their doubts. In Pusan this week, in a coffee shop lighted by one feebly glowing electric light bulb, a reporter talked with a South Korean newspaperman who had planned originally to defect to the Communists, but who at the last minute had changed his mind. Critical of Rhee, protesting that the old man's stubbornness has cost his nation dearly, he, nevertheless, is a staunch Rhee supporter on the straightforward ground that Rhee is the strongest political force in Korea today.