Washington and Korean Politics

• Yi Seung-Man was the first and founding president of Korea, and is widely known to the world as Syngman Rhee. Rhee used Washington as his political base until the end of his presidency in 1960.
  1. Rhee's House in Washington. Syngman Rhee lived in this house about 10 km north of the White House, at 4700 16th Street, NW, Washington, DC. Rhee returned to Korea in 1945 after the liberation of the country from Japanese occupation. While living in this house, he acted like the "life-time president of the Republic of Korea," and collected taxes or donations from Koreans living in the United States. Rhee was not popular with all Koreans, but every Korean, after seeing this stylish house, says Rhee was a great man. This building is still in good condition.

     If you examine the events that took place from 1933 to 1948, you will realize that this house was Korea's provisional government. You will also note that Korea is turning out to be the country Rhee envisioned in this house.

  2. In 1954, Rhee visited the United States. After his busy schedule in Washington, he went to Independence (near St. Louis) to thank Harry Truman. Do you know who Truman was? His was the vice president for Franklin D. Roosevelt, and became the president in 1945 after Roosevelt died. He won the election of 1948 and remained in the White House until 1953. This means that he covered the most crucial period for the creation of the Republic of Korea and the Korean War. Korea as an anticommunist nation exists thanks to the bold decisions made by Harry Truman. He was the most important American president for Koreans.

     Photo from the public domain.

     President-Elect Eisenhower in Korea (1953). Photo from the public domain.

  3. While he was in Washington during his 1954 visit, Rhee had some tough confrontations with Dwight Eisenhower (U.S. president 1963-60).

     ** First, Eisenhower wanted to assign the task of Korea's post-war reconstruction to Japanese. Rhee said "No." and he prevailed. Rhee wanted to send many Korean students to the United States to pick up necessary skills to run the country's economy.

     ** Second, Eisenhower told Rhee that the United States had to reduce its troop strength in Korea from 300,000 to 70,000. Rhee knew that this was Eisenhower's political reality, and agreed. But he demanded that the United equip and feed 700,000 Korean troops. Here also, Rhee got what he wanted.

  4. Throughout his presidency, Rhee was a difficult man to politicians in Washington, and some of them suggested a regime change in Korea. But Eisenhower was against this idea. He knew Americans could not find a better alternative to Rhee. Eisenhower was right. Throughout his career as a general and as the president of the United States, Eisenhower was right many times, including his decisions on Korean matters. Not many people seem to know this.

     Eisenhower at Princeton University, photo by Y.S. Kim (1961).

  5. Eisenhower (1961). I took this photo of Eisenhower with my own camera. He was visiting Princeton at that time. He was no longer the president, but was guarded by secret service agents. I was told to move back while I was pushing the camera shutter. On his left was Robert Goheen, then the president of Princeton University.

     Dwight Eisenhower was the first U.S.president to visit Korea in 1960, after Rhee left for Hawaii. In 1953, two weeks before his inauguration, Eisenhower visited Korea. He met Rhee and had a quarrel with him. The Korean War was still going on, and Eisenhower wanted to stop the war by concluding the Pammunjom agreement. Rhee could not accept ending the war without unification of the country.

• Washington has been and still is an important place for Korean politicians. It is customary for Korean presidential candidates to come to Washington to introduce themselves to influential Americans. If you go to Chun Doo-Hwan's house in Seoul and open the front door, you will see a big photo of himself with Ronald Reagan. If you go to the office of the chief of the Korean army, you are likely to see a photo of himself with his U.S. counterpart.

  Last Lunch (1991) and Last Supper.

  Photos with American celebrities are valuable instruments for young Korean politicians to jack up their positions. Indeed, in Washington, there are several groups of Koreans who are engaged in the business of arranging meetings for visiting Korean politicians with high-ranking Americans.

  Here I am not cynical about this aspect of Korean culture. I regard this as a component of Korean wisdom. I am using internet webpages to promote myself by showing photos of myself with big shots in my profession. You may be interested in how I arranged my photo with Eugene Wigner. Who is Wigner? Click here.

  Who is this young man?

  I never met Einstein. He died in 1955 and I went to Princeton in 1958 as a fresh graduate student. Yet, many people ask me whether I met Einstein. Thus, I had to construct a webpage with my photo next to an image of Einstein. However, I have to justify why I could be so close to him. It took me many years to do this job. Click here for the result of my work.

  Photo with Einstein? This is the highest honor any physicist can get. I am very happy to say that this is a product of Korean wisdom.

  DJ was very young in 1969. So was I.

  My wife had photos with these two politicians.

  Geun-Hye was still Park Chung-Hee's daughter in 2005.

• Let us go back to Korean politicians. It was 1969 when Kim Dae-Jung came to Washington and had a meeting with Koreans. At that time, the United States pulled out one of the two combat divisions from Korea. These used to be the 2nd and 7th Infantry Divisions in Korea, and the 7th Division was being pulled out. Koreans became scared, but I was not. Because I knew the U.S. troops were in Korea, not because of the North Korean threat, but because Americans wanted keep Japan and China separated. I knew also that Park Chung-Hee did not know this at that time.

  I asked Kim DJ whether American troops are in Korea solely because of the military threat from the North. Kim said No. I then asked what other purposes Americans have. He looked at me carefully and said "It is not appropriate to comment on this issue at the present time" (1969). I was impressed. About him, people say this and that these days, but he was a man with talent and courage. I think he deserved his Nobel peace prize.

  This is a photo of DJ giving a speech to Koreans in Washington (1969).

• Jo Sumi (Korean singer) sings at DJ's Nobel recital in Oslo's City Hall in Norway.

• Park Geun-Hye came to Washington in 2005 to meet with some important American politicians. She also had a meeting with Koreans in this area. It is not unusual for Korean politicians to start their presidential campaigns in Washington.

Y3 = YS made in Washington

• People talk about my weaknesses and make accusations. Some of them are true. Perhaps my most serious weakness is that I am not able to forgive my personal enemies, quite contrary to the teaching of Jesus.

  But some of you make false accusations. It is often said that I copied my initials (YS) from someone else. This is false. I was introduced to the physics world as YS in 1961. See my first published paper, Phys. Rev. Lett. Vol. [6] 313 (1961). I was a graduate student then.

  Korean freedom fighter, Washington's Shoreham Hotel

• In 1978, a hard-nosed Korean freedom fighter was visiting the United State, and was taking a nap in one of the fifth-floor rooms at Washington's Shoreham Hotel. While he was resting, in the same hotel building, the Korean Ambassador was hosting a big reception where many Korean and American VIPs were invited.

  Next day, Korean newspaper reporters asked the freedom fighter why he did come to the reception. He became annoyed and said he did not know anything about the event. He said further he could not understand why the leader of the opposition party should be excluded from the national event like that. He paused for a moment and said "YS is not a bad guy." The YS he was referring to was Ambassador Kim Yong-Shik.

  Indeed, this second YS (Kim Yong-Shik) was a career diplomat and was well known among Koreans in the United States and Europe. He was as old as my father was. He used to become very happy whenever I and my friends told him he has very nice-looking daughters. He was indeed a very kind person and was always willing to talk with fellow Koreans. He was definitely not a "bad guy" even though Park Chung-Hee thoroughly hated the above-mentioned freedom fighter.

  The reporters quickly noted that the freedom fighter also deserved a YS title. This is how the third YS or Y3 emerged in 1978. How can the first YS of 1961 copy the name from the third YS of 1978?

  with Dr. Kim Kyung-Won (far right), when I visited his house in Toronto (1966). The person on my right was also my high-school classmate. His name is Cho Sang-Ha. Like me, he got his degree from Princeton. This photo thus contains three Ivy-League PhDs and their families.

• In 1984 or 1985, the Korean Ambassador was Kim Kyung-Won, and the leader of the opposition party was Lee Min-Woo. When Mr. Lee came to Washington, the Ambassador went to the Dulles International Airport to greet him. Indeed, it was one of the happiest events for Koreans in the United States.

  I met Dr. Kim Kyung-Won in 1951 when we were together in high school. He used to tell stories about how British MPs (MP = member of Parliament) conduct their business. He later studied at Harvard and got his PhD degree there.

  He simply practiced what he learned in school. We learn many and enough good things in school. Why do we not practice them? Mainly because many unknown Koreans practiced good things in the past, we made a substantial progress in democracy since 1978.

  with Anatoly Logunov (1992,1999).

• By now, you should know that the first YS (myself) is also a hard-nosed man. In my first YS paper of 1961, I say quite bluntly that A. A. Logunov was wrong. Who is Logunov? In 1961, he was an active Soviet researcher, but he later became the president of Moscow State University.

  When we established diplomatic relation with Russia in 1991, Korea started issuing entry visas to Russians. Academician Logunov was the first Russian to get the Korean visa with Visa No. 1.

  In 1992, Logunov visited the University of Maryland, I was introduced to him by one of my colleagues. He seemed to remember the 1961 event, and was not friendly to me. When I ask my Russian colleagues whether Logunov is like King Herod, they laugh and say that Herod is a very appropriate title for him.

• In 1999, Professor Logunov invited me to one of the conferences held at his institute. He was the director of the Institute of High Energy Physics at Protvino (about 100 km south of Moscow). He told me he enjoyed his trip to Korea immensely, and showed me his watch with "Kim Dae-Jung" mark. Staff members of his Institute were also friendly to me. Like to see my photo with them?

Right after his high school graduation in 1954, he came to the United State as a freshman at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now called Carnegie Mellon University) in Pittsburgh. He then went to Princeton in 1958 for graduate study. After receiving his PhD degree in physics in 1961, Dr. Kim spent an additional one year there as a post-doc. He came to the Washington area to join the faculty of the University of Maryland.

For his background, you may be interested in the following webpages.

1. Korean background. He came to the United States after high school graduation.

2. Pittsburgh. He was a student at the Carnegie Institute of Technology from 1954 to 1958.

3. Princeton page. He received his PhD degree from Princeton University in 1961 and stayed there for one additional years.

4. Washington, DC. In 1962, he joined the faculty of the University of Maryland (in the Washington area) as an assistant professor. He is now a professor emeritus at the same university.