An exemplary life as a civil servant

SHIN BOK-RYONG
The author is an emeritus professor of history at Konkuk University.

When I think about what the life of a public official should look like, I take the example of former U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk. He was selected as a Rhodes Scholar for four years, beginning in 1931, and studied philosophy and political economy at the University of Oxford. Before classes began, he would be in the classroom 15 to 20 minutes early and wait for the professor.

Rusk, whose nickname was Elijah, once wanted to become a minister. After receiving the Cecil Peace Prize at his Oxford graduation, he returned to the United States and became a professor at Mills College. The Rhodes Scholar had the pride of a prodigy and did not write a doctoral dissertation or add footnotes. He said, “As we are not writing by reading other people’s writings and citing them, our arguments are theories.” He was eccentric and particular.

Rusk rejoined the military as a captain in 1940, just after World War II broke out, and served in the China-Burma-India front before being transferred to the War Department. There, he created the intelligence bureau and worked as a division head at the operations bureau. In his 1990 memoir, “As I Saw It,” he grumbled that his accomplishments there amounted to finding out whether the Indochinese Peninsula was in the north or south of China.

Rusk served as chairman of the Rockefeller Foundation after the 1950-53 Korean War and was later appointed secretary of state, receiving twenty-fifth of the salary. He enjoyed the “greatest job in the world” in the Kennedy and Lyndon administrations from 1961 to 1969. He famously went to coin laundries and washed his clothes with locals during his time as secretary of state.

When he retired from politics, Rusk only brought income tax returns and a notebook containing his friends’ contact information. He then taught at the University of Georgia. He refrained from flying in the same airplane as his wife, ensuring that one would survive to care for their children in the case of a crash. It is not true that those who do great things must neglect their family.