His Own Man

On a sultry afternoon last week, the revolving doors whirled and a brisk little Asian stepped into the lobby of the Washington Star building. He strode over to the marble classified-ad counter and stuck out his hand. "I am President Rhee of the Republic of Korea," he said. The flabbergasted clerk took his hand and murmured, "I'm glad to meet you," just as John Simmons, the equally flabbergasted State Department protocol officer, caught up with Syngman Rhee and whisked him off to the offices of the Star's Editor Ben McKelway for a chat.

A short while later President Rhee appeared on the doorstep of a brick mansion on upper 16th Street--now firmly chaperoned by Simmons. To the housekeeper who answered Rhee's ring, Simmons announced: "This is the President of the Republic of Korea." "Oh, my," gasped the woman, "I'm a sight." She managed to invite Syngman Rhee inside with some show of hospitality, however, but since the owner of the mansion (Clark Griffith, patriarch of the Washington Senators baseball club) was not at home, Patriarch Rhee declined. Instead, he clambered through some poison ivy and inspected the house next door, where for years he waited out his Washington exile. His verdict: "It's run down."

Jitters & Blunt Greetings. Such unorthodox behavior at the beginning of President Rhee's 14-day state visit to the U.S. was enough to keep the State Department in constant jitters, and to emphasize the fact that Syngman Rhee is no ordinary chief of state. If the brusque old man decided he wanted to visit an old neighbor, or to thank a newspaper for its support--or to scold the U.S. for faintheartedness--he did just that. When he received the key to the city, Rhee grinned broadly. "I will drive as fast as I want to," he said, "and nobody will touch me."

On his arrival at National Airport, the doughty President was so moved by his warm reception that he threw away his prepared speech and spoke extemporaneously for 20 minutes, throwing his schedule out of kilter and forcing Host Dwight Eisenhower to wait and sweat in the sweltering heat on the White House porch. Rhee's words of greeting at the airport were characteristically blunt: "If we only had a little more courage, we could have reached the Yalu . . . But some people had a little cold feet and we could not do what we were ready to do."

Coke Boxes & Shopping Bags. Wherever he went last week the wrinkled, spry old man added his own unorthodox touches to the most routine ceremonials. After laying the customary wreaths at the tombs of George Washington and the Unknown Soldier, Rhee signaled to a State Department aide who trotted behind him carrying a shopping bag. At each stop the aide solemnly opened the shopping bag and removed a red maple sapling from the old palace garden in Seoul, and Rhee solemnly planted it. At Mount Vernon Syngman Rhee paused to acknowledge the cheers of a crowd of tourists, and a small girl begged him to stand still so her mother could snap a picture. "Take her picture with me," said Rhee, drawing the child close to him, "and be sure to send me a print."

In his appearance before the Joint Session of Congress, Rhee encountered technical difficulties that would have upset and confounded a lesser man. After Speaker Martin's fluffy introduction (see below), the diminutive (5 ft. 4 in.) Rhee discovered that his head barely reached the microphone. He began his remarks on tiptoe, but in a few moments an enterprising clerk appeared with an empty Coke case. He nudged President Rhee, who stopped talking, stepped on the box, thanked the clerk, and serenely resumed his speech. If his drastic proposals for the defeat of Communism were received coolly, they were received with respect, and Syngman Rhee was not disturbed. "When old friends get together to discuss this frankly and in a friendly way," he said after a two-hour conference with his old friend Dwight Eisenhower, "you always benefit. We may not be able to please all of us."

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