The People's Choice

Everyone seems to disapprove of 77-year-old Syngman Rhee except the voters of South Korea. The U.S., Great Britain and the U.N. clicked their tongues in disapproval at President Rhee's highhanded way of running his nation. A majority of Korea's parliamentarians were violent and vociferous in opposition. Rhee's rejoinder: "Ask the people."

As his term of office as Korea's first and only President drew to an end last month, Rhee's re-election by the oppositionist Assembly was plainly in doubt. Rhee demanded a constitutional amendment giving the people the right to choose their President. Korea's assemblymen refused to pass the amendment. Rhee countered by throwing many of his opponents in jail, sending his police to terrorize others, and threatening to dissolve the Assembly altogether (TIME, June 9, et seq.).

Last week, with the opposition thus softened up, Rhee offered a compromise amendment. It included all his original demands (among them popular election for the presidency), but offered to yield the President's right to appoint a cabinet to the Premier and the Assembly. As President of the Republic, Rhee of course could still veto these appointments.

As a compromise, it was not much, but to Rhee's exhausted opponents, despairing of any help from the U.S. or other tongue-clicking powers, it looked better than nothing. Released from jail and routed out of their hiding places by Rhee's policemen, they meekly joined his forces in the Assembly, and accepted the compromise amendments 163-0. Rhee got to work on arrangements for a presidential election--confident that he is, after all, and in his own fashion, the people's choice.

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