The founding president finally sees the light

Kim Bang-hyun
The author is the national news editor of the JoongAng Ilbo.

Few founding presidents in world history are as disparaged as Syngman Rhee. There is no memorial museum for him, and statues are hard to find. This is in stark contrast to U.S. President George Washington who appears on a one-dollar bill and whose name adorns more than 150 locations, including the capital city.

The few statues of Rhee in Korea have suffered. Graduates of Pai Chai University in Daejeon erected a statue of Rhee, an alum of the school, on campus in 1987. Pai Chai School, a predecessor of Pai Chai University, was founded in 1885 by missionary Appenzeller in Jeong-dong, central Seoul. The university was abolished in 1925 but revived with the opening of the Daejeon campus in 1980.

Rhee entered Pai Chai School’s English department in 1894 at age 20. But his statue was repeatedly removed and rebuilt. Left-wing civic groups argued that “The traces of the dictator should be erased.” In 2018, the City Council of Daejeon demanded the city government remove the statue. Twenty-one of the 22 Daejeon City Council members were part of the Democratic Party. Rhee’s statue at Inha University in Incheon was removed in 1984 because of student activists. The statue has since been in storage.

But the atmosphere has changed dramatically. There is pressure to rebuild Rhee’s statues at home and abroad, with many attempting to know the founding president better. Seoul’s Veterans Ministry’s push for the construction of the Syngman Rhee Memorial last March was a catalyst. Many people, from President Yoon Suk Yeol to ordinary citizens, are helping raise funds for the project.

The fundraising campaign is spreading across the country, including to Busan. The Busan Metropolitan City Promotion Committee for the Rhee Memorial, with some 400 members, officially launched on Jan. 5. The group plans to raise money for the memorial by conducting a campaign to spread knowledge of its honoree through lectures, forums and talk shows.

Rhee, meanwhile, was named “Independence Fighter of the Month” in January. It was the first time that Rhee has been recognized for his “distinguished service for independence.” The Democratic Party called for the selection’s retraction, calling Rhee a “dictator who obstructed with cleanup of Japanese collaborators.”

Many people still derogate Rhee. But he has absolute merit. He led the country to a free democratic system in stark contrast to North Korea. On the last day of 2023, Elon Musk, the owner of Tesla and X, shared a nighttime image of the Korean Peninsula. Along with the title of “Night and Day Difference,” the picture had a caption: “Crazy idea: Let’s divide a country into half capitalism and half communism and check on it 70 years later.”

I hope evaluation of the founding president restarts from this photo.