petition Theodore Roosevelt on behalf of their country. After calling on Philip Jaisohn in Philadelphia, Rhee and Yoon journeyed to Oyster Bay, where they were received by Roosevelt on the eve of the Portsmouth conference. The president, effusing enthusiasm and protestations of friendship for Korea, saw them briefly. He declined to accept a written petition, however, on grounds that it should be sent through diplomatic channels.1
As far as its having any effect on Korea’s fate was concerned. Rhee’s mission was a failure. Even before he saw Roosevelt, William Howard Taft was en route to Tokyo to sign an agreement acknowledging Japan’s interests in Korea. But Rhee did not know this.
In Washington, Rhee continued to receive backing from a number of Protestant clergymen, some of whom had heard favorable accounts of him from colleagues in Seoul. For a time, Rhee considered attending a theological seminary. He probably recognized, however, that full-time ministerial duties would allow little time for political activity. In addition, his academic interests were outside the range of the usual theological curriculum.
Although he entered George Washington University on a ministerial scholarship in February 1905, he continued to devote much of his time to agitation on behalf of Korea. Little is known of Rhee’s activities in this period, but that he was a source of annoyance to American officials is suggested by a comment from Minister Allen in Seoul, who wrote apologetically to Senator Dinsmore: “I refused to give Ye Sung Mahn a letter to a single person in America and tried to keep him from going.”2
At George Washington, Rhee’s subjects included English, European and American history, and philosophy. Although he had been admitted as a sophomore in recognition of his studies in Seoul, his marks were generally indifferent. The foreign student is recognized as often being at a disadvantage in an American university, but Rhee’s mediocre record is not without some significance. Although he would later earn a Ph.D. at Princeton, and at the height of his political career would prefer the title of “Doctor” to that of “President,” little in Rhee’s career shows him as a profound thinker. Rather, his early career is marked by singleminded devotion to an ideal—Korean independence—and hostility towards every peril, real or imagined, which threatened this ideal.
Rhee supported himself at George Washington through lectures on “Korea, Land of the Morning Calm.” But in his homeland the struggle to resist the Japanese was in its final throes. The Portsmouth treaty in September 1905 brought general recognition of Japan’s “paramount” interest in Korea. Horace Allen, lobbying for Korea in Washington since his replacement as American minister, regretfully returned his operating funds to the Yi emperor with the remark that the cause was hopeless. In November 1905, Tokyo spelled out its demands for a virtual protectorate over Korea. At first the emperor refused to consent, but when the palace was surrounded by Japanese soldiers, when government ministers were beaten, and when the emperor himself was threatened, the Japanese emerged with the imperial signature.
In a final gesture, the emperor sent a new appeal to the United States, telling Roosevelt that the protectorate had been agreed to under duress. To convey the message he chose Homer B. Hul-bert, a Seoul missionary and editor, who agreed to make a secret trip to Washington. In America, however, Hulbert was able to see neither the president nor the secretary of state; the American position was that since the protectorate had been established, the emperor could not make his own representations. The fact was that the last years of the Yi dynasty had been so ineffectual that few Americans, outside of court favorites such as Allen and Hulbert, were sympathetic to the emperor. Most foreigners in Seoul looked with favor on the protectorate, while international opinion had been conditioned by the reports of observers such as George Kennan:
“The Korean Government . . . [comprises] (a) the Emperor’s Cabinet, consisting of nine ministers; (b) the sorcerers, soothsayers, fortunetellers, and mudangs or spirit mediums, who influence and often control legislation; (c) the governors of the thirteen provinces; and (d) the magistrates or prefects of the 344 prefectures into which the provinces are divided. All the official positions in classes (c) and (d) are nominally filled by Imperial appointment, but the selection of appointees is subject to court influence, “pull,” or intrigue, and, as a rule, the offices are sold to the highest bidder. Provincial governors pay from ten thousand to forty thousand Korean dollars for their places, and then not only recoup themselves but amass fortunes by robbing the defenseless people whom they are sent to govern. As there are no independent law courts, and as every governor or prefect is a judge as well as an administrator, a Korean who is robbed must seek redress from the robber. . . .
“The activities and operations of the existing Korean Government may briefly be summarized as follows: it takes from the people, directly and indirectly, everything that they earn over and above a bare subsistence, and gives them in return practically nothing. It affords no adequate protection to life or property; it provides no educational facilities that deserve notice; it builds no roads; it does not improve its harbors; it does not light its coasts; it pays no attention whatever to streetcleaning or sanitation; it takes no measures to prevent or check epidemics; . . . it corrupts and demoralizes its subjects by setting them examples of untruthfulness, dishonesty, treachery, cruelty, and a cynical brutality in dealing with human rights that is almost without parallel in modern times.*
As significant as Kennan’s excoriation of the Korean government was the fact that his judgment of the Korean people gave little hope of reform from within:
“The first impression that the Korean people make upon an impartial and unprejudiced newcomer is strongly and decidedly unfavorable. . . . The domestic environment and personal habits of the lower classes are filthy and repulsive in the extreme; the moony expressionless faces of the petty officials and gentlemen of leisure who saunter through the streets fanning themselves or smoking long-stemmed pipes show no signs of character or traces of experience; and the unemployed workingmen in dirty white cotton jackets and baggy trousers, who lie here and there on the ground with flies crawling over their closed eyelids, do not compare at all favorably with the neat, alert, industrious laborers of Japan. . . .
“As one’s field of observation widens, so as to take in country as well as town, and to include moral as well as physical and intellectual characteristics, one’s first impressions harden and one’s bad opinion of the people settles into a conviction. . . . They are the rotten product of a decayed Oriental civilization.”3
If Kennan was not an entirely impartial observer, articles such as his nonetheless made it difficult for Rhee to get much sympathy for his country in the United States. Moreover, it was true that when the Japanese resident-general arrived in Seoul in 1906, most foreigners there welcomed the change. Rhee graduated from George Washington in the spring of 1907, shaken by Korea’s fate and uncertain as to his own future. Although committed to the Methodist Mission Board to return to Korea on its behalf, he determined to do postgraduate work in the United States and was admitted to Harvard University.
At Harvard Rhee lived in seclusion, “forming no lasting friendships while there and entering not at all into the social life of the college.”4 His academic work improved, however, and he began to read extensively in international relations. When he received his master’s degree in the spring of 1908, unstable conditions in his homeland reinforced his new-found academic interests and prompted him to continue his education. At first Rhee decided to do graduate work at Columbia. At the last minute, however, a friend persuaded him to enroll at Princeton.
Rhee’s two years at Princeton appear to have influenced him more than any of his previous schooling. The president of Princeton at that time was Woodrow Wilson, whose later eloquence on behalf of national self-determination Rhee would often cite. As at Harvard, Rhee was withdrawn from the student body, but he became a faculty favorite. He attracted the attention of Wilson himself, who provided him with a letter of recommendation for speaking engagements which cited him as “a man of strong patriotic feeling and of great enthusiasm for his people.”5
Rhee
