his nomination as Korean delegate to a Methodist convention in Minneapolis providing him passage. There he first manifested a lifelong penchant for using any available forum for political purposes by delivering a ringing denunciation of the Japanese, which drew severe criticism for endangering missionary activities which had to be carried on under the occupation.6
Rhee could not earn a living from his speeches, however, and in 1913 accepted a job as principal of a Korean-language school in Hawaii. The islands would be his home until shortly prior to World War II; they would also be the breeding ground for rivalries—both within and without the framework of the Provisional Government—which would largely dominate post-liberation politics in Korea. In Hawaii as well as in Washington, Rhee would earn his reputation as the stormy petrel of Korean independence.
* Andrew J. Grajdanzev, Modern Korea (New York, 1944), pp. 34-35. Kennan, a close friend of Theodore Roosevelt, was the uncle of America’s erstwhile ambassador to the Soviet Union and was frequent contributor to Outlook, the magazine in which this article appeared.
* Although Rhee was in the United States at the time of the Mansei uprising and played no role in the events of 1919, spokesmen for the Rhee government encouraged references to him as a “leader” of the revolt. When Rhee was forced to abdicate in 1960, at least one wire service story characterized him as having led the 1919 uprising.
4: The Politics
THE PERIOD of the Japanese occupation sent many Koreans away from their homeland. Gradually there came to be three major centers of Korean exiles: the Maritime Province of the U.S.S.R., northern China, and the United States. All three, together with Korea itself, were centers of independence activities. The importance of the expatriate groups is measured by the fact that after liberation both north and south Korea would be largely ruled by erstwhile expatriates.
Within the United States and its territories, no place was more a hotbed of exile activity than Hawaii. Many Asian immigrants to America had gotten no further than Hawaii; there were Japanese, Chinese, and Koreans, some of whom had run out of money in Hawaii, others of whom had been won over by the attractions of living among their fellow nationals in the islands. If the Korean community in Hawaii was not the largest in size, it nonetheless reflected more than any other group the turbulence in its homeland.
Politically conscious Koreans have historically found difficulty in working harmoniously together. Indeed, when Syngman Rhee was beginning his revolutionary career in the Independence Club he had refused a request by Philip Jaisohn to suspend publication of the Maiyil Sinmun lest it compete with the club organ Independence. A tendency towards factionalism long prevalent in Korean politics was nowhere more in evidence than among exiles in Hawaii, who brought old feuds with them from Korea and developed new ones in the islands. By 1913, the Korean community there was already marked by divisions based on family ties, personal animosities, and provincial origins.
Rhee arrived in Hawaii full of plans for stimulating nationalism among the Koreans there. His post as principal of a Korean-language school, however, brought him into conflict with Methodist authorities over the issue of segregated schools. Although church officials opposed separate schools for different nationalities, Rhee fought for segregation as a means of propagating Korean nationalism. Opposition from church leaders prompted Rhee to break with the Methodists in 1916 and set up his own institution, the Christian Institute, along the lines he had advocated.
Rhee’s differences with church authorities were not confined to the educational field. Once having broken with the Methodists, he set up a rival church as he had set up a school, establishing the former as a non-denominational institution dedicated to Korean independence. By striking out on his own when unable to win over his opponents, Rhee became known for his intolerance and impetuousness. His admiring biographer concedes that Rhee’s twenty-five years in Hawaii “were marked by disputation.”1 But by setting up his own institutions Rhee was able to build up a strong personal following, some of which would follow him back to Korea in 1945.
The Mansei uprising and the subsequent formation of the Provisional Government prompted Rhee to journey to Washington in the spring of 1919. Just as he had been prevented from pleading Korea’s case at Versailles, so was he unable to gain American recognition of the Provisional Government. While in Washington, however, he established a “shadow” Korean legation, the Korean Commission, which was to lobby on behalf of the Provisional Government and Rhee for the next three decades.
The establishment of a government-in-exile, however poor its prospects, served to acerbate differences among independence leaders scattered abroad. In Hawaii, Rhee quarreled with Ahn Chang-ho, head of the well-established Korean National Association and father of the Western-oriented Young Korea Academy. Ahn, like Rhee a Christian and an erstwhile member of the Independence Club, was less interested in immediate political action than in stressing moral values to the Korean people, propagating Korean culture, and introducing Western methods into his homeland. Ahn and his followers, unlike Rhee, were willing to work under the Japanese, and were able to establish schools which served as forums for their teachings and as cover for other independence activities.
If Rhee’s relations with his colleagues in Hawaii were less than harmonious, his dealings with the Provisional Government in Shanghai became equally strained. The Provisional Government reflected the fiery leadership of Kim Koo, who sought means of harassing the Japanese militarily and had little respect for Rhee’s diplomatic representations. Other elements of the government-in-exile were Communist-inclined and, though distrusted by both Kim and Rhee, pressed vigorously for military cooperation with the Chinese Communists. The Kuomintang’s break with the Communists in 1924 hastened the splintering of the Provisional Government into rightist and leftist groups.
Although the exile government remained a predominantly rightist organization, Rhee had no more sympathy with Kim’s militant views than with Ahn Chang-ho’s program of internal reforms. Rhee’s relations with Ahn were further aggravated when Kim Kyu-sic, a leading member of the Young Korea Academy, began to press for the admission of leftists into the Provisional Government. Although his own diplomatic overtures had proven unproductive, Rhee was totally unsympathetic with any approach except his own. Despite Kim Koo’s efforts, military activity against the Japanese came to be the province of leftist Koreans.
The Mansei uprising was a purely nationalistic demonstration against Japanese colonialism. Despite Communist propaganda to the contrary, it was neither a proletarian uprising nor one inspired by the Bolshevik revolution. There was nothing proletarian about the signers of the March declaration, who were largely teachers, Christian pastors, and professional men. They had little knowledge of events in Russia, where in any case the success of the Bolsheviks was not yet assured.
By 1920, however, Communist philosophy was winning Korean adherents in the U.S.S.R. and Manchuria. During the Russian Revolution the large concentration of Koreans around Vladivostok had supported Kerensky’s provisional government, but after the war the Soviets succeeded in winning over many young Koreans and new immigrants. Although they understood little of the Marxist dialectic, young Koreans who were sufficiently anti-Japanese to have left their homeland were immediately attracted by the Soviets’ anti-imperialist professions. These Russian-oriented Koreans would form the nucleus of Communist government in North Korea after World War II.
Gradually, despite harsh Japanese countermeasures, the first Communist cells worked their way into Korea itself. Although the movement appears to have had little direction from Moscow, it found supporters among intellectuals disillusioned with the failure of the peaceful Mansei uprising. In addition, it enjoyed a measure of prestige as a result of the gradual stabilization of the Soviet government. Unity and direction, however, were badly lacking; the
