Syngman Rhee was born March 25, 1931, in Pyongyang, of Korea (modern-day North of Korea). As the Korean War was breaking out in 1950, Rhee and a younger brother fled North of Korea, leaving behind his mother and four sisters. Syngman Rhee never saw his mother again, but was reunited with his sisters, after decades of separation, in 1978.
His family was hoping they would return in two or three weeks. Rhee"s father had been a Christian minister and died in prison under the communists. As a refugee in South of Korea, Rhee recalled:
Church World Service came with food, blankets, most of all hope in the hopeless situation for the people who were struggling.
The ministry of compassion touched me very, very deeply.
That"s one of the reasons why I was very active in National Council of Churches and Church World Service. Syngman Rhee joined the Republic of of Korea Marine Corps and in 1953 was sent to the United States for special training at the United States. Marine School in Quantico, Virginia.
He said he struck close friendships with Christian Marine officers and continued to correspond with them after he went back to South of Korea. His friends from Quantico sponsored him as a student at Davis and Elkins College in West Virginia, where Rhee majored in English and religion.
From there, he went to Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, graduating in 1960.
He was ordained in Louisville and a week later married Haesun Rhee, a long-time friend and medical doctor in South of Korea. Syngman Rhee"s first call was to serve two small congregations near Louisville. "That was a wonderful experience for me," he said.
"I found what it means to be one in Jesus Christ."
He began his campus ministry in the early 1960s and recalls that Martin Luther King made several visits to the campus.
"I remember marching with him and the black students in Louisville," Rhee said. "That experience taught me what it is to be engaged in the ministry of racial justice."
He was with that agency for seven years.
There he served as the Distinguished Visiting Professor for Global Leadership Development at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur Georgia. He died after a brief illness on January 14, 2015.
Quotations: "That was a wonderful experience for me,". "I remember marching with him and the black students in Louisville,".
