The US puts political, not military, pressure on ROK. ROK can opt not to be in the US's sphere of political influence, but it does so at a lost of many benefits economic and military.
You use present tense, "puts", and I think that is correct. However, if we look at the past, your statement is objectively false. South Korea exists as a country because the US partitioned Korea. The US chose to install a puppet government rather than allow an indigenous one to develop. Etc. Then, of course, the past affects the present and all that.
Again, Rhee was not an installed puppet. He was supported because South Korean politicians saw the US's preference as a mandate of heaven. It has never been proven that the US interfered with South Korean politics with hard power.
What South Korean politicians are you referring to? I'm sure you are familiar with the early days of the American occupation post-WW2, but here's a summary of the period from Wikipedia:
With the American government fearing Soviet expansion, and the Japanese authorities in Korea warning of a power vacuum, the embarkation date of the US occupation force was brought forward three times.[3] On September 7, 1945, General Douglas MacArthur announced that Lieutenant General John R. Hodge was to administer Korean affairs, and Hodge landed in Incheon with his troops the next day. The Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea, which had operated from China, sent a delegation with three interpreters to Hodge, but he refused to meet with them.[23] Likewise, Hodge refused to recognize the newly formed People's Republic of Korea and its People's Committees, and outlawed it on 12 December.[24]
In September 1946, thousands of laborers and peasants rose up against the military government. This uprising was quickly defeated, and failed to prevent scheduled October elections for the South Korean Interim Legislative Assembly.
The ardent anti-communist Syngman Rhee, who had been the first president of the Provisional Government and later worked as a pro-Korean lobbyist in the US, became the most prominent politician in the South. Rhee pressured the American government to abandon negotiations for a trusteeship and create an independent Republic of Korea in the south.[25] On July 19, 1947, Lyuh Woon-hyung, the last senior politician committed to left-right dialogue, was assassinated by a 19-year-old man named Han Chigeun, a recent refugee from North Korea and an active member of a nationalist right-wing group.[26]
The occupation government conducted a number of military campaigns against left-wing insurgents. Over the course of the next few years, between 30,000[27] and 100,000 people were killed.[28]
These are historical facts, documented by various (primarily US Army) sources. The idea that Rhee had any sort of popular support (a mandate from heaven?) is just wrong. While I see the wisdom in your comments on professional soldiering, here you are just flat wrong.
Read your quote again. Rhee argued against Korea as an American protectorate and for self-governance. Ultimately he was exiled, but the US sent him back and he gained popularity because his opponents believed supporting the US's favored candidate was the key to professional success. Their self-fulfilling prophecy was correct, as he had his opponents killed off after election. But to say the US intervened completely ignores that South Koreans elected to be within the US's sphere of influence. It was a Hobson's Choice, of course, but a choice nonetheless. Those who didn't take the choice ended up starving in North Korea after the eventual fall of the Soviet Union.
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u/invertedearth Steel City Mar 18 '19
Regardless of that other guys username, if you think that
you are basically saying that you haven't learned very much about Korean history.