Activities and affiliations

Government and administration South Korea state institutions 1873–1935 ○ Died of illness

Pioneer of Korean communism who fused the Bolshevik revolution with national liberation against Japanese rule

On his deathbed he declared: 'I die without seeing the Korean revolution succeed. Comrades, you must establish a Korean Soviet Republic.'

A pioneer of Korean communism who transformed from a Korean Empire army officer into a socialist revolutionary, becoming the first to fuse Marxism with the Korean national liberation struggle. He founded the Korean Socialist Party in 1918, served as prime minister of the Korean Provisional Government where he championed armed resistance, and after breaking with Syngman Rhee led the Korean Communist Party (Shanghai faction) in pursuit of combining national liberation with class revolution.

Government and administration South Korea state institutions 1875–1965 ○ Died

First president of South Korea who demanded unification by force and refused to sign the armistice

In a July 1950 letter to Truman: 'I pray… that we can turn to the offensive, break through the hard crust of enemy forces and start the victorious march north.'

Syngman Rhee was a Korean independence activist imprisoned during the late Joseon period for his activities with the Independence Club; after his release he earned a PhD in political science at Princeton, and in 1919 became the first president of the Korean Provisional Government. In 1948 he was elected the first president of the Republic of Korea, building a fiercely anti-communist state under the National Security Law and publicly demanding the forcible reunification of the peninsula by marching north across the 38th parallel. During the Korean War he refused any armistice short of unification, and in 1953 he unilaterally released 27,000 anti-communist prisoners of war, nearly derailing the ceasefire talks; he never signed the armistice. Forced to resign by the April Revolution in 1960 after a rigged election, he died in exile in Hawaii.