in 1910, the year in which Japan formally annexed its Korean protectorate. By this time the Japanese were well on their way to making Korea a case study in the reprehensible aspects of colonialism. While humiliating the Korean people at every turn, they went about their plan to turn Korea into a major supplier of food and raw materials to their home islands. Physical improvements made by the Japanese were of little benefit to the Koreans; railroad construction was to facilitate the movement of exports to ports such as Inchon and Pusan, and sanitary measures were to make Seoul habitable for Japanese officials. As for the Koreans, it was already apparent that seldom had they ever been united for anything as they were united against the Japanese.
Even prior to annexation there were uprisings among the politically volatile Koreans. An insurrection by a partisan “Righteous Army” in 1906 was not brought under control for two months. The abdication of the emperor the following year brought riots and demonstrations in Seoul. In 1909, a young Korean nationalist assassinated the Japanese resident-general, Prince Ito, in Harbin. From July 1907 to the end of1908, according to Japanese figures, nearly 15,000 Korean insurgents were killed and nearly 9,000 taken prisoner.
Japan’s formal annexation of Korea came as something of an anticlimax. The Japanese made the abdicated emperor a prince in their own imperial household and bought off leading members of the Korean court with large monetary grants. But beneath the new trappings Korea was under the absolute control of a governor-general who was responsible only to the Japanese emperor and whose centralized control reached down to the smallest county and village.
Although Korea would have presented problems to the most skillful colonizer, so heavy-handed were the Japanese that they succeeded in unifying Korean nationalist sentiment after Korea’s own nationalists had failed. Japanese economic exploitation was so overt that it could be recognized as such by the simplest Korean peasant. The scheme of a group of officially backed Japanese financiers to monopolize Korea’s underdeveloped land came in for bitter criticism after a number of tracts of land had been turned over at a fraction of their actual value.
Measures aimed at destroying Korea as a national entity were an unnecessary aggravating factor. Under the Japanese the Korean language was dropped from the school curriculum. Koreans were forced to adopt not only Japanese citizenship but also Japanese names. When he became president of South Korea, one of Rhee’s major concerns would be measures to preserve the country as a cultural and national entity in the face of any future encroachments by the Japanese and the Russians.
In the period immediately following his graduation from Princeton, Rhee appears to have seriously considered abandoning his role as patriot-in-exile. With Korea’s political fortunes at a nadir, Rhee’s missionary friends urged him to devote himself to church work. Rhee himself, having enjoyed his years in America, found it difficult to dispute those who pictured the fruitlessness of agitating for a lost national cause.
With mixed emotions Rhee finally accepted a job with the Seoul Y.M.C.A., a step which required his returning to live under Japanese rule. On his return to Korea in the winter of 1910, via Europe and Russia, he moved into the Rhee family home with his father. Although presumably under surveillance by the Japanese, Rhee was not molested.
Rhee might have continued in social work in his homeland but for his fears in connection with Japanese harassment of Korean Christians. By the fall of 1911, rumors were rife that, as part of the Japanese campaign to stamp out foreign influence, Christian churches in Korea would have their charters revoked and be placed under Japanese administration. With little warning, 135 leading Korean Christians were arrested on charges of a “conspiracy” to assassinate the governor-general.
Pressure from Western church circles forced reduction of the severe sentences which had been meted out to the Korean churchmen, but Rhee, fearful that he might be next, determined to leave Korea for good. He left his homeland with probably little hope of seeing it again, but with recognition that as long as Korea remained under the Japanese he would be far better off in the West.
Not long after Woodrow Wilson reached the White House, his doctrines of self-determination became known in Korea, where the Fourteen Points served to remind the people of a national heritage dissipated by Korea’s own rulers. In addition, the death of the deposed emperor in January 1919 gave rise to a surge of patriotic feeling. Whatever the shortcomings of the Yi dynasty, it had at least meant rule of Korea by Koreans.
4. Syngman Rhee (right front) with a group of students at Princeton University in 1910, the year in which Rhee received his doctorate and Japan formally annexed Korea. It was at Princeton that Rhee became a faculty favorite and attracted the attention of Woodrow Wilson, who cited him as “a man of strong patriotic feeling and of great enthusiasm for his people.” (Pacific Stars and Stripes Photo)
On March 1, 1919, thirty-three leading Koreans met in the Bright Moon Cafe in Seoul, where they signed a declaration of Korean independence which was then read to crowds in the street. Demonstrations spread from Seoul to the countryside, with marching crowds waving long-concealed Korean flags and chanting: “Mansei!” (May Korea live ten thousand years!) To underscore the peaceful character of the demonstrations, and with the hope of bringing world opinion to bear on the Japanese, the signatories of the declaration immediately surrendered themselves to the Japanese. Although there were some cases of Korean-instigated violence, the peaceful character of the demonstrations was generally maintained.
The Japanese reaction to the Mansei uprising was swift and cruel. According to Japanese figures, 553 Koreans were killed, over 1,400 wounded, and over 10,000 flogged. In retrospect, prospects for outside intervention were so poor in 1919 that the uprising was clearly ill-timed. The armistice had taken its toll of the Wilsonian idealism which had marked the war years, while Japan had emerged from the war with sufficient prestige that none of the Allies were anxious to antagonize Tokyo. When Rhee had sought to lobby for Korea at Versailles in 1918, he had been refused an American passport lest his presence there embarrass the Japanese.*
To the Koreans, the dignity which marked the nation-wide passive resistance has given it a special place in Korean history. In both its peaceful character and the popular backing it received, the Mansei uprising was a high point in the Korean independence movement. Henceforth the independence movement would be noteworthy not for its unity but for its factionalism. Foreign influences, particularly communism, would sap the movement of its purely nationalistic aspect. In the place of passive resistance, violence would become a hallmark of Korean exiles.
The aftermath of the uprising, however, was noteworthy for the formation of a provisional Korean government. A group of independence leaders, meeting in Seoul in April 1919, formed a Korean Provisional Government with Syngman Rhee as president. Although the Provisional Government had not in any sense been elected by the Korean people, appointment of Rhee as its president was recognition of his growing stature in the independence movement. His role in the new government provided a quasi-official basis for his diplomatic representations on behalf of Korea over the next three decades.
The Provisional Government began as essentially a triumvirate of Kim Koo, Ahn Chang-ho, and Rhee, although as time went on, others would play an increasing role. Kim, as premier, established close links with the Chinese Nationalists, and in the 1930’s strongly supported Sino-Korean guerrilla activities against the Japanese, while directing assassinations which made him, among the Japanese, the most feared of all Korean exiles. Ahn Chang-ho, leader of the Western-oriented Young Korea Academy (Hungsadan) faction, spent much of his time in Hawaii but was closely associated with underground activity in Korea itself until his death in 1939. Rhee, who was popularly regarded as being on friendly terms with President Wilson, operated largely in the United States. The Provisional Government was controlled from Shanghai, and tended to reflect more the leadership of Kim Koo than of Rhee.
Rhee
