The Three Revolutions of Syngman Rhee

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IKS and the History Department’s Center for Historical Research are pleased to co-sponsor: The Three Revolutions of Syngman Rhee Friday, January 18, 2019 3:00-4:30pm Dulles Hall 168 230 Annie and John Glenn Ave David Fields University of Wisconsin-Madison Abstract: In the pantheon of authoritarian strongmen of the Cold War, it is tempting to think of Syngman Rhee as the one we know the best. Prior to his return to Korea in 1945— courtesy of a War Department transport plane—Rhee spent nearly forty years in the United States. He earned degrees from Harvard and Princeton, spoke English fluently, and was a dedicated Christian to boot. He seemed tailor-made for the task of assisting the U.S. Army to occupy a country that did not want to be occupied. But Rhee was not returning to Korea as an American miracle man, but as a Korean revolutionary hero who had struggled against the power structures of the traditional Korean state and the Japanese occupation. Back on Kore- an soil he would lead a third revolution against both the last vestiges of the Chosun state– which the Japanese had largely left in place–and what he believed was a Soviet effort to subjugate the entire peninsula. This lecture will examine Syngman Rhee’s role as a revolutionary and what it can teach us about the Korean Independence Movement, the Division of Korea, and the Korean War. Bio: David P. Fields is the author of Foreign Friends: Syngman Rhee, American Excep- tionalism, and the Division of Korea (University Press of Kentucky, 2019). David earned his PhD in US diplomatic history from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2017. He is the editor of The Diary of Syngman Rhee, published by the Museum of Contemporary Korean History, and the book review editor of the Journal of American-East Asian Relations. His scholarship has been published in the North Korea Review, Journal of American-East Asian Relations, SinoNK.com, Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society-Korea Branch and in the Working Papers Series of the Cold War International History Project. He is a faculty affili- ate of the East Asian Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the dep- uty director for digital projects at the Center for the Study of the American Constitution. This event is supported by OSU’s Department of History and by a U.S. Department of Education Title VI grant to The Ohio State University East Asian Studies Center. Free and Open to the Public Contact: Stephanie Metzger | East Asian Studies Center | [email protected] | easc.osu.edu .

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