The Life of Francesca Donner-Rhee Patrick VIERTHALER

The Life of Francesca Donner-Rhee

A Biographical Sketch of an Austrian who Became South Korea’s First Lady

 

Patrick VIERTHALER

 

Introduction

Franzisca Donner’s life took an unexpected turn when she met the Korean independence activist Syngman Rhee, whom she subsequently married. Rhee eventually became the first president of the Republic of Korea, and as a result his

Austrian wife became South Korea’s first First Lady. 

To date, no scholarly publication has exclusively detailed Donner-Rhee’s life. However, in 2005, Yi Sŭn-ae (aka Soonae Lee-Fink), a Korean based in Tyrol, published P’ŭranch’esŭk’a Ri sŭt’ori [The story of Francesca Donner-Rhee] (Yi 2005). Inspired by one personal meeting with Donner-Rhee just before her death in 1992, the book is a fictional account that declares itself to be a changp’yŏn sosŏl (novel) rather than a biography. Another account introducing Donner-Rhee to Korean readers was released in 2018 by Pok Kŏng-il, a novelist and essayist: Akkŭk P’ŭranch’esŭk’a: uyŏnhi osŭt’ria esŏ t’aeŏnan han’guk yŏin [Francesca: A Korean woman born accidentally in Austria] is presented as a play script, depicting key moments of her life with Syngman Rhee. Both texts have in common that they are non-academic, fictionalized accounts of historical events. They focus only on the most significant episodes in Donner-Rhee’s life, such as her first meeting with Syngman Rhee, or their going into exile in 1960. Both lack references to historical sources and have therefore not been analyzed in detail for the present paper.

In her home country of Austria, the most widely read account of Donner-Rhee’s life to date is most likely that written by Dietmar Grieser, known for his light-hearted books on Austria’s cultural history. Donner-Rhee’s biographical profile appeared as a chapter in Heimat bist du großer Namen: Österreicher in aller Welt [The homeland of great names: Austrians around the world] (Grieser 2000: 23–27). However, as with the two Korean novels, Grieser’s account provides no references and, as elaborated below, contains claims and details for which evidence is lacking, and which are likely false.

One might attempt to guess why Donner-Rhee’s biography has rarely been the subject of historical research. One possible reason is that the First Lady carries no official status in the ROK. Another is that of Rhee’s image. Contemporary South Korea is a society sharply divided, in ideological terms, by the issue of how to come to terms with its authoritarian past, especially the Rhee (1948–1960) and Park Chung-hee (1961–1979) eras. ¹ Among historians, the evaluation of Rhee remains highly disputed.²  

For many, Rhee is remembered as an incapable and agitating autocrat who was responsible for political division,^[1] and who also, despite his record as an anti-Japanese independence activist for four decades, eventually left the colonial collaboration issue unresolved, haunting South Korean society up to the present day.^[2] Furthermore, Rhee is held accountable for the nation’s fervent political polarization after 1945, extending

 

¹           This ideological rift is one of several that have been able to emerge and be openly discussed in South Korean society as a result of the 1980s democratization movement (cf. Yi KH 2012, Kim W 2015). In post-democratization South Korea, conservative historians evaluate the Rhee and Park Chung-hee period mainly in terms of the foundation of the South Korean education system, economic development, and staunchly anti-Communist liberal democracy (cf., e.g., Pak et al. 2006 and Yi 2013). Progressive historians, on the other hand, who are themselves often former participants in the student democratization movement, primarily view South Korean history as one of failed de-colonization, a decades-long struggle against the exploitative ruling elite and excessive state violence and oppression (cf., e.g., Han et al. 2009 and Sŏ 2005).

²           An example of such a rift as an ongoing discussion in historiography is the dispute over how to evaluate and commemorate the South Korean state foundation of 1948, which at its core is about evaluating the legacy of Rhee’s actions during the liberation period (Vierthaler 2018 and 2019). In conservative interpretations, Rhee was a statesman possessing Machiavellian virtù, foreseeing Cold War rifts and having to choose between a US-allied, anti-Communist, and free-market-bound Korea, or a Korea tied to the Soviet Union, ultimately ending up like North Korea. In progressive interpretations, on the other hand, Rhee is mostly responsible for intense polarization, political division, and enormous violence. For extensive general studies on Rhee cf. Chŏng (2005) and Sŏ (2005) as representative approaches to Rhee from a “progressive,” critical point of view. On the other hand, Yonsei University’s Global School of International Studies (est. 1997), especially its first chair Yu Yŏng-ik, and the 2012-established Rhee Syngman Research Institute in the same school, represent a rather Rhee-friendly stream of thought. Cf. Yu (2000), Lew (2014) and Yi CY et al. (2012) for examples of “conservative” evaluations of Syngman Rhee. As for Western scholarship, Bruce Cumings’ highly influential two-volume study on the origins of the Korean War (1981, 1990) contains an assessment of Syngman Rhee’s performance that is highly critical and has, as it is widely read (in South Korea and elsewhere), contributed significantly to an image of South Korea’s first president that is nothing short of devastating, whereas William Stueck’s re-evaluation of the Korean War and its origins, partly a rebuttal to Cumings’ conclusions, highlights the international dimensions of the failure to achieve any other outcome than the political separation of the peninsula (Stueck 1995: 23–27; 2002; 2004).

even to feuds among right-wing nationalists themselves, ^[3] numerous atrocities (murders, dubious death-sentences, massacres) in the name of anti-communism,^[4] and amending the constitution and interfering in the electoral process in order to secure himself extended power.

Weighing these evaluations of the memory of the first presidential couple in South Korean history, this chapter aims, for the first time, to construct Donner-Rhee’s biography based on collected and analyzed primary sources. First and foremost, I attempt to focus on and reconstruct her personal life. How did she meet Syngman Rhee, and why did they choose to get married? What was her life like in liberation-period Korea? How visible was she as First Lady? How was her life after the April Revolution? Additionally, what did Koreans think of their representation by an Austrian First Lady; and, crucially, to what extent did Donner-Rhee influence her husband’s politics?

 

             

(Fig. 1) Francesca Donner-Rhee’s passport, where her name is spelled “Franziska Donner.” Issued on 16 March

1934, valid until 15 March 1939, and expanded for travelling to the United States (right page). The handwritten remark on the left page states that the original photograph was replaced by a new one. Reproduced in Ihwajang (1993: [26]).

 

Family Background and Name Spelling 

Francesca Donner-Rhee was born Franzisca Henrica Donner on 15 June 1900 in Inzersdorf near Vienna, Austria, the third of three daughters to Rudolf (1865–1921), a grocer (Krämer), and Franzisca Donner (1869–?).^[5] While her dream was to become a doctor, in order to pass down the family business her father educated Francesca “like a son,” by sending her to a school of economics and on an exchange program in Scotland to study English (Donner-Rhee 2007: 21–22). However, after her father died prematurely in March 1921, having been in a coma due to diabetes insipidus, ^[6] Francesca asked for her share of the inheritance to be paid out. Finishing her education in Austria,^[7] Francesca began working at the League of Nations in Geneva, most likely as a translator, though the precise nature of her work there remains unknown.^[8]

The spelling of her name varies. Born Franzisca, she used the spelling Franziska for her Austrian passport from 1934 (fig. 1). After marrying Syngman Rhee, she adopted the Italian-sounding version Francesca. In Korean, Donner-Rhee’s given name is usually spelled “P’ŭranch’esŭk’a” (프란체스카). However, the Korean spelling of her name varies, even in her own ID documents.^[9] For example, in her first Korean residence card from 1968 she used the spelling “Hŭransesŭk’a” (흐란체스카), but in her Korean ID card from 1983 she used the spelling “P’ŭraensisŭk’a” (프란치스카).

A similar variation of names occurs with her surname. Sometimes, she is referred to as Donner-Rhee, but elsewhere her name becomes Donner, while at other times only Rhee is used. Though she referred to herself as Mrs. Rhee in her own letters as well as on the 1968 residence card, her name appears as Donner on her 1983 ID card, and as Donner-Rhee in her posthumously published books. I hypothesize that this might be accounted for by different marriage laws in the US and South Korea. Whereas in Korea, married women’s surnames do not change, in the US they usually do. Therefore, while Francesca herself used Rhee as her surname in official (English-language) correspondence, Korean sources tend to refer to her as either Donner or Donner-Rhee.

She also seems to have adopted a Korean name: Yi Pu-ran 李富蘭, Yi being her

 

husband’s family name. Pu-ran is most likely a phonetic equivalent of the first half of Francesca’s name rendered in Chinese characters.^[10] 

Grieser (2000: 23), in his account of Donner-Rhee’s life, takes it for granted that her mother was Italian and that she therefore used the spelling Francesca instead of Franziska. This information has been repeated in subsequent publications, e.g. VKÖ (2012) and the German Wikipedia entry as of June 2020.^[11] However, this information is incorrect: Donner-Rhee’s mother was Austrian both by birth and extraction (born in Inzersdorf to Austrian parents in 1869 as Franziska Gerhartl), and there is no suggestion elsewhere that Donner-Rhee had any Italian heritage.^[12]

In this chapter, the spelling Francesca Donner-Rhee will henceforth be used to take account of how she used to spell her first name after 1934 and to highlight her biography as an Austrian Korean who was a first-hand witness to Korean history as the wife of Syngman Rhee.

 

First Encounter in Geneva

In Geneva, while working for the League of Nations, Francesca Donner met her future husband Syngman Rhee, who was visiting to plead the case for Korean independence to the organization (Lew 2014: 178–186). In her memoirs, Donner-Rhee describes their first encounters in detail (Donner-Rhee 2007: 17–23). 

On 21 February 1933, Francesca and her mother were dining at a hotel. Sitting at a table for four, and with all other seats filled, the waiter approached the Donners and asked if they would mind sharing their table with a man travelling alone. Taking a seat at their table, Rhee extended his thanks in French. Francesca Donner’s first impression was that of an “elegant and noble Eastern gentleman” (19) who, to her surprise, ordered two potatoes and sauerkraut, and sat there eating his food quietly “unlike Western gentlemen” (ibid.). When she enquired as to which country he came from, she found an opportunity to surprise Rhee with her knowledge of the “beautiful mountains of Kŭmgang” (20). The next day Donner saw Rhee’s face in La Tribune D’Orient, accompanied by an interview in which he argued for Korea’s independence.^[13] She decided “without much thought” (21) to send him an anonymous message through the

 

hotel staff. To her surprise, a reply came: “Thank you very much for your kindness in reading the newspaper article about me. Rhee Syngman” (ibid.).

A day later, after the press featured him in another article, the two exchanged short messages again. This time, Rhee invited her for a cup of tea. She accepted. Strolling along Lake Geneva, they began getting to know each other. In her memoirs, DonnerRhee mentions how Rhee told her about the conditions he faced travelling the world without a passport and his pursuit of Korean independence.

Robert Oliver, ^[14] a close long-term friend of the Rhees from 1942 onward, interviewed Francesca in 1944. In a memorandum, he wrote of their first meeting:

Because of all the publicity given Rhee when he was in Geneva concerning his plan to bring the Korean cause up to the League, he was a well-known figure in Geneva at that time. (…) Rhee found her quite familiar with the Korean question, which surprised him, because during all the years past he had found so few people with much knowledge of the situation. Miss Donner confessed she had followed up all the articles about Korea and was very happy to meet the person who represented the great cause. From then on there began a friendly and cordial relationship. Francesca Donner was an eager auditor for Rhee’s stories of the oppression suffered by his Korean people, and from her own Central European background she was enabled to understand their plight with full sympathy. (Oliver 1944, quoted in Lew 2014: 198)

While Rhee stayed in Geneva until 18 May, Francesca Donner and her mother returned to Vienna a few days after her first meeting with Rhee. 

Rhee did not mention Donner in his journal for two and a half months. On 9 May when he writes about the difficulties of securing a loan in Berlin, he finally mentions the help of a “Mrs. Downer,” most likely a misspelling of Donner (Lew 2014: 197). Lew Young Ick (Yu Yŏng-ik) deduces from this anecdote that for Rhee it was

“probably not love at first sight” (ibid.). 

 

However, Donner-Rhee’s own memoirs contradict this assumption. Her recollections allow the conclusion that their exchanges evolved into affection after their first encounter in February, and that they gradually fell in love with one another over the course of weeks and months. She writes, for example, about sending sauerkraut to Rhee in Geneva (Donner-Rhee 2007: 22).

On the way from Paris to Moscow to propose a four-way alliance between the Soviets, the US, China, and Korea against Japan, Syngman Rhee managed a stopover in Vienna from 7 to 15 July. While in Vienna, Rhee had scheduled meetings with the acting Chinese minister Tung Te-chen and the Russian minister Adolf Markovich Petrovsky (Lew 2014: 188), but he also wrote to Francesca Donner immediately upon arriving on 7 July (197). Rhee’s journal contains an entry about his trip to the Villa Hermes with Donner on 9 July, returning in the evening — and likewise to the train station on 15 July, where she saw him off, “wav[ing] to him until the train [to Moscow] turned the bend,” as he recorded (ibid.). Rhee would later refer to these days as the

“Vienna Affair” in his personal diary.^[15]

In her memoirs, Donner-Rhee describes how sternly her mother kept an eye on her, and Rhee’s busy itinerary during that time. Her parents were against the two becoming involved with each other, as she was expected to take over her father’s business. Under surveillance, meeting each other was not easy, yet they managed to see Vienna’s main sights and take a “poetic stroll in the forest” (Donner-Rhee 2007: 22). Around this time, they decided to marry, against the objections of her parents:

His faithful, pure and truthful character, reminding me of a young boy, gave me the courage to make a difficult decision. I learned the beautiful and romantic Korean word sarang [love] and started to long for the “land of the morning calm.” (Donner-Rhee 2007: 22–23)

On his way back from Moscow, Rhee again stopped in Vienna for a night. Although his diary does not mention Donner, one can assume that they met (Lew 2014: 197). 

 

Acquiring a US Visa and Marriage in New York (1934)

In mid-March 1934 Francesca Donner had her Austrian passport issued (fig. 1). However, since Rhee did not hold US citizenship — he was formally stateless — she needed to obtain an immigration visa in order to be allowed to enter the US (DonnerRhee 2007: 28). She describes this process, taking her nearly a year before her visa was finally granted, as “painful” (ibid.). Robert Oliver, in an interview from 1944, remembers Donner’s difficulties with bureaucracy:

[Rhee] and Miss Donner maintained a lively correspondence, and decided to marry. As Rhee could not return to Europe, Miss Donner arranged to travel to America under the immigration quota. This proved very difficult. She applied

 

at the American Consulate in Vienna for a visa but ran into great difficulties because the Consul did not think she should marry an Oriental. (Oliver 1944, quoted in Lew 2014: 198–199)

To get an immigration visa for her, Rhee, in his journal dated January 1934, writes about “revealing the Vienna Affair to his American friend Jay Jerome Williams, a reporter for the International News Service, in order to enlist his help in securing a visa for Francesca” (Lew 2014: 197–198). However, the US consulate in Vienna was “not forthcoming with a visa for an Austrian woman wishing to go to America to marry an

Oriental man” (ibid.). Rhee then sought the help of Stanley Hornbeck, a political advisor at the State Department, in July 1934. Francesca Donner was finally issued a visa two months later, on 26 September, and arrived in New York on 4 October.

 

 

(Fig. 2) The wedding portrait of Francesca Donner and Syngman Rhee. The writing on the left is a letter from Rhee to Kim Ku (= Paek Pŏm), to whom he sent this portrait in March 1934. Source: Kyŏnghyang sinmun, 19 March 1992.

 

Roughly a fortnight after the visa was granted, the couple married on 8 October 1934 at the Hotel Montclair in New York:

Mr. Yongchin Choi took her to the Hotel Montclair. There they discussed plans for the wedding and secured a marriage licence at the City Hall next morning. (…) She and Rhee were married on 8 October at 6:30 at the Special Hall at the Hotel Montclair with Dr. John Haynes Holmes and Reverend P.K. Yoon jointly officiating. The vows were said in both languages — Korean and English. After the ceremony they had dinner in the Hotel’s main dining room and the hotel orchestra played the wedding march in their honour. (Oliver 1944, quoted in Lew 2014: 198–199).

Colonel Kimberland and his wife, friends of Rhee’s from Princeton University, offered their help with the wedding. The colonel and another American friend, named Reimer, served as the groom’s “best men” while Mrs. Kimberland and a Korean friend named Yŏm Nam-gung participated as bridesmaids (Lew 2014: 198).

For both Donner and Rhee it was a second marriage. Prior to her relationship with Rhee, Donner had been married, in her twenties, to a professional racing driver named Helmut Boering, a union that was short-lived (Lew 2014: 196). Rhee, at age fifteen, was married to Park Sŭng-sŏn 朴承善 (Lew 2014: 3–4). The couple had one son together, Yi Pong-su 李鳳秀, born in 1899, who passed away due to diphtheria in 1906. They divorced in 1910, after many years of separation: Rhee had been imprisoned from 1899–1904, and then lived in the US from 1904–1910.

Francesca was “the third woman in [Rhee’s] life,” according to Lew (2014: 193–

194), who seemingly excludes Rhee’s first wife, Park Sŭng-sŏn, from this tally.^[16] The first, Kim Hye-suk (aka Nodie Dora Kimhae Kim, 1898–1972) was a Korean who headed the Korean Christian Institute and other pro-Rhee organizations in Hawaii, but

“no real evidence that [they] were anything but close friends” exists (ibid.). The second was Im Yŏng-sin 任永信 (aka Louise Yim, 1899–1977), another independence activist. Rhee proposed to her in 1931, but she decided against marrying him, as he was a divorced man twenty years her senior. Nevertheless, Im and Rhee stayed in close contact and she later assisted as his secretary and his minister of commerce and industry (the first female minister in Korean history). To quote Lew Young Ick, the leading scholar on Rhee’s activities as an independence activist: “the first he worked very close[ly] with, the second he proposed to, and the third he married” (ibid., 192).

It is safe to say that the Donner-Rhee marriage was one of love. Not only did Rhee decide to marry a “headstrong Austrian divorcée,” who might be “unbefitting for a man of his refined background” (Lew 2014: 196) as a member of the Chŏnju Yi clan 全州李氏 and a sixteenth-generation descendant of King Sejong’s elder brother, but also, for a man of his standing, Syngman Rhee’s decision to marry a non-Korean was

“unprecedented in Korean modern history. Given the staying power of Korea’s racial homogeneity, it will probably remain for a long time to come the only case of a Korean president marrying a foreigner. (…) [I]t is likely that Rhee himself would not have guessed that his First Lady would be anyone other than a proper Korean woman from a suitable Korean family” (Lew 2014: 192). Yet, for the thirty years that followed, their marriage was a success, despite — or maybe because of — the fact that neither one spoke the other’s native language.^[17]

Yet it was not only Rhee who sacrificed something through this marriage. Donner also sacrificed her prospects of taking over the family business in favor of marrying not only “an Oriental,” but also a stateless activist based in Hawaii without much

 

security for the future. Rhee was fifty-eight years old when they met, Donner only thirty-three. In other words, he was twenty-five years older than her, and roughly the same age her father was when he died. 

Over the subsequent decades, Donner-Rhee dedicated herself to supporting the cause of her husband. In her memoir, written in 1988, she described her role by Rhee’s side as follows: “woman [sic] should be seen, not be heard” (Donner-Rhee 2007: 18). First she assisted him in his (unsuccessful) quest for diplomatic recognition of the Korean Exile Government, and later in his striving for an anti-communist state in

(southern) Korea. She became his “indispensable comrade and companion” (Lew 2014: 199), with her intended succession to the family business, her international education, and her background as a translator in Geneva surely playing a role in her comportment. Robert Oliver, the long-time personal friend of the Rhees, describes this relationship as follows:

From [their marriage] onward she was a complete and vital part of his life — his companion, helpmeet, and secretary. They were more completely married than any other couple I had known, reminding me of Old Testament Ruth, for whom ‘thy people have become my people, thy ways my ways.’ Like Dr. Rhee, she became my friend and like him she taught me to know Korea and its people, from the inside out. (Oliver 1978: 6)

The Kyŏnghyang sinmun, by then harshly critical of Rhee, writes in an article on

Rhee’s twelve years as president that “[f]or Syngman Rhee, Francesca was a wife like no other, his nurse, at the same time his secretary, and his lover who knew him like nobody else.”^[18] 

 

Becoming “Francesca”: US Citizenship and Life up to 1946

Until liberation in 1945, the couple lived in New York, Hawaii (1934–1939), and Washington D.C. (1939–1946). Immediately after their marriage, sometime in October

1934, Donner-Rhee filed a “Petition for Naturalization,”^[19] an application that was usually submitted after five years of residence in the US.^[20] On 26 January 1935, she filed another such petition to the district court in Hawaii.^[21] Half a year later, on 23 July 1935, she filed a “Declaration of Intention” (fig. 3) to become a US citizen, usually filed by immigrants after two years of residence. This document provides evidence of

 

Francesca’s decision to change the spelling of her name from Franziska, under which she entered the US on 4 October 1934 via the ocean liner Europe, to Francesca.

 

 

(Fig. 3) “Declaration of Intention” to become a US citizen, filed on 23 July 1935 by Francesca Rhee to the US district court of Hawaii in Honolulu. From this document, we see that Francesca entered the US as Franziska Donner on 4 October 1934, landing in New York. Source: National Archives, Alien Case File for Francesca Rhee.

 

 

 

(Fig. 4) Francesca Rhee’s Certificate of Naturalization, dated 3 December 1940, proving that she succeeded in acquiring US citizenship. Source: National Archives, Alien Case File for Francesca Rhee.

Under American law, after moving to Washington D.C. in 1939, she had to refile her application with the local authorities.^[22] Six years after her arrival in the US, on 3 December 1940, “Francesca Rhee” received her Certificate of Naturalization, thereby renouncing Austrian citizenship and becoming a US citizen (fig. 4). Thus, the Austrian Franziska Donner had become the American Francesca Rhee.^[23]

In her memoir, Donner-Rhee recalls meeting initial opposition to their marriage in two telegrams from Korean activists in Hawaii, who warned Rhee ahead of time: “if you return with your Western wife [sŏyang puin], all your compatriots will turn away. Therefore, make sure to return alone” (Donner-Rhee 2007: 24). This experience deeply upset her, reducing her to tears and reviving memories of her mother’s woebegone face — but Rhee insisted that they make the journey to Hawaii together. This experience was merely a herald of what awaited her. Fighting a constant battle against the criticism of Koreans who would never accept her as one of their own,^[24] Donner-Rhee’s later decision to wear hanbok, the Korean dress, might have been due to the fact that she longed to be accepted by Koreans. 

During the 1930s and 1940s, Hawaii was home to a significant number of Koreans who later played an important role in the foundation of the ROK.^[25] Rhee had been living there most of the time since 1913, and had a considerable network of friends and acquaintances there (Lew 2014: 64–177). Thus, returning to Hawaii seemed only natural. Contrary to their expectations of disapproval toward their marriage, the couple were welcomed by Koreans upon arriving and Donner-Rhee felt herself an object of intense fascination. She developed a passion for Korean culture. Once in Hawaii she learned how to make kimchi, and she later described how she had, by that time, accepted her “traditional” role in their small family: “[A]s a silent wife I do not expect any help in the kitchen from my husband” (Donner-Rhee 2007: 25–26).

In November 1939, the couple decided to move to Washington D.C. in order to step up political activities intended to gain recognition of the Korean cause by US authorities. For the next six years, they lived in a small, two-story, red-brick house near the National Zoological Park, at 1766 Hobert St. N.W.^[26] During this period, Rhee drafted — most likely with some help from his wife — Japan Inside Out: The Challenge of Today (Rhee 1941), published on 1 August 1941, in which he argued that Japan was on the verge of conquering vast swaths of Asia and would not feel obliged to heed calls from the US (Lew 2014: 204–205). Indirectly, Rhee was arguing in this

 

book for a pre-emptive US strike against Japan. As we know, this strike did not happen. Only four months later, however, Japan attacked the US at Pearl Harbor, dragging the previously isolationist US into WWII.

From September 1940 onwards, Rhee attempted to gain formal recognition for the Korean Provisional Government (KPG) in Shanghai (later Chongqing). He did so by creating two lobby organizations, the Korean American Council (Han-Mi Hyŏphoe), formed on 16 January 1942, and the Christian Friends of Korea (Lew 2014: 210–211). The former included his wife as one of its members (ibid.), along with Robert Oliver, whom the Rhees met during this time.

Ultimately, however, Rhee’s lobbying activities were an unmitigated failure (Lew 2014: 224). The US did not grant the KPG diplomatic recognition, nor did it recognize the KPG’s declaration of war against Japan.^[27] The State Department, in particular, saw Rhee as an irritating figure by the end of the war. Yet, his contact with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in the War Department, and particularly with Colonel Preston Goodfellow, helped him to secure advantages such as being able to use OSS communication equipment to correspond with the right-wing faction of the KPG in Chongqing, and with Kim Ku 金九 in particular (ibid.). Furthermore, by the end of the war Rhee was widely known as a fervent anti-Communist, partly because he firmly believed that there had been a secret agreement at Yalta that would allow the Soviet Union to exercise its influence on the Korean Peninsula after liberation, even though such an agreement did not exist (ibid., 228–229).

From Donner-Rhee’s personal memoirs, one gets a glimpse of the mundane aspects of their life as independence activists for a non-recognized nation in Washington D.C. Describing the period as full of “positive memories,” Donner-Rhee narrates anecdotes from shortly after the war ended in 1945 (Donner-Rhee 2007: 31–34): when attending events, for example at the Press Club, Rhee used to park his car in the lot reserved for diplomatic personnel. As no Korean government was formally recognized by the US, this represented an informal action by the independence movement. Moreover, she describes Rhee’s habit of speeding when going to events. One day, after the war, Rhee apparently disregarded a red light while heading to give a speech at the Press Club and was followed by two patrol officers on their bikes. He ignored them until his speech was finished. Rhee’s habit of speeding, and this episode in particular, led Donner-Rhee to decide to learn to drive and, afterwards, “be the one in the driver’s seat.”

 

 

Liberation Period in Korea (1946–48)

On 15 August 1945, at noon in Japan and Korea, the Japanese emperor, in a recorded speech broadcast over radio, asked the Japanese people to “bear the unbearable” and declared that the Japanese Empire would accept the Potsdam Declaration and surrender unconditionally to the Allied Forces.^[28] WWII was over, and for Korea, thirty-five years of Japanese colonial rule came to an end. The long-anticipated moment of liberation arrived, but, alas, liberation did not entail independence. Instead, over the next three years, domestic and international events would result in the establishment of two nation-states on the Korean peninsula: the US-backed Republic of Korea in the South, and the Soviet-backed Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in the North.

For Syngman and Francesca Rhee, the hardships of being formally stateless, which they already faced at the time of their marriage, continued until the South Korean state was promulgated in 1948. The Rhees heard the news of Japan’s surrender on the radio at their home in Washington (Lew 2014: 267). Following this moment that he had so anticipated all his life, Rhee rushed to plan his return to Korea. However, discussions with State Department officials stretched for weeks (Oliver 1978: 17–18), and Rhee only managed to return to Korea in October 1945 with the help of General John Hodge, head of the US Military Government in Korea, and General Douglas MacArthur, supreme commander of the Allied Forces in Japan (Lew 2014: 267).

Donner-Rhee, however, had to stay behind in the US for four more months due to visa issues. She used this time productively to continue lobbying for Rhee’s cause at the Korean Commission in Washington with Robert Oliver and his wife.^[29] Eventually, she managed to travel to Korea by ship, sailing from Seattle on 13 January 1946 and arriving in Seoul twenty-five days later.^[30] 

In Korea, the Rhees started their life with little money. For two years they lived in the Ton’amchang 敦巖莊, a Korean-style house (hanok) in the present-day Sŏngbuk District,^[31] before moving to a house in Map’o District in September 1947. There, they faced various hardships, some of which were typical of the situation in liberated Korea,

 

while others were of longer standing: fuel was scarce, the water supply was erratic, the currency was highly unstable, and their mail underwent military censorship. In letters to Robert Oliver, Donner-Rhee details their trials: “there is no water (…). Our neighbors told us that even when the Jap governor used the house, they were not able to get the water up. If the Japs could not do it 10 years ago how can we expect to get water now — w[h]ere everything is in a more disadvantageous position,” and “we are cooking on 2 little char coal [sic] stove[s] it is like camping. (…) Our guards got all sick – from the water (…).”^[32] At the same time, she acknowledges to Mrs. Oliver that “[w]e have moved to the river house – I enjoy looking at the sailboats which are anchored[.]”^[33] They stayed in Mapo District only a few weeks, pressured by the US army to move on.^[34]

Like others during the liberation period, the Rhees were subject to rationing. Giving a glimpse of what life was like at that time, Donner-Rhee writes in a letter to Robert Oliver:

For instance, our last ration was for 4 people (we both and our 2 servants) 2 fig bars and 2 packages of 10cts worth of chocolates for which we paid Won 80.-- that means for each item Won 20 that would mean in the case of the chocolate 1$ to Won 200.-- (…) it is a lot of money to pay Won 20.-- for such a little item if a man earns a few thousand Won. (…) For 2 years factories are idle and people are kept idle and driven into a state of laxity. It will take much effort to bring the people back where they have left of[f] on August 15th[,] 1945.³⁷

However, not only had Donner-Rhee not experienced Korea before liberation from Japanese rule, we must also not forget the broader picture: it is safe to assume that most Koreans had far less than the Rhees (indeed, one might wonder whether they shared their rations evenly with their two servants). Penury and deprivation, especially the shortage of rice, were central to the experience of Koreans living through the liberation period, as were widespread outbreaks of epidemic disease, such as cholera in May 1946 (Chŏn 2006: 158–164; Millett 2005: 64–65, 81–82).

In mid-October the Rhees were able to buy, through generous donations pooled from thirty-three family friends, the Ihwajang 梨花莊, a three-room hanok at the foot of Mt. Naksan, in walking distance of present-day Hyehwa Station.^[35] Built in the 1930s, the Ihwajang became the Rhee residence until July 1948, again from April to May

1960, and for Donner-Rhee alone from 1970 to 1992. Unlike the former house, which

 

was located next to the Han River, the Ihwajang left a more positive impression on her: “it is much warmer here – behind the Seoul University on a hill — Naksan — the

ground is very natural — I personally like it better than the former place.”^[36] How did living in Korea feel for DonnerRhee? Cognizant of her vulnerability, John

J. Muccio, US special representative (1948– 49) and ambassador to the ROK (April 1949–September 1952),         noted           that

Francesca “felt alone and afraid as a ‘white

Austrian’ in Korea” (quoted in Cumings 1997: 341–342). Similarly, two years

earlier, in the summer of 1946, Robert 

Oliver wrote in a letter to his wife: (Fig. 5) At their new residence, the Ihwajang, in spring 1948. Source: Ihwajang (1993: [3]).

Mrs. Rhee looks bad — very thin and

more nervous than ever. She and Dr. Rhee are insisting on her going every place with him, and she insists that the Korean men bring their wives to whatever reception they attend. This violation of their customs, plus the fact that she is an Occidental, plus her nervous tension, all combine to make her rather generally disliked. She is fully aware of it, but is determined to carry on in the same vein. (Oliver 1978: 33)

This contrasts sharply with Oliver’s first impression of Donner-Rhee in 1942:

I met Mrs. Rhee, too — nee [sic] Francesca Donner, beautiful, lively, and fascinating — the woman twenty-five years his junior, whom he had met and wooed in Geneva, in 1933. (Ibid. 6)

In a similar vein, Yu Yang-ju, a former ambassador to Vienna who made the acquaintance of Donner-Rhee in the mid-1960s, characterized Francesca as

a very elaborate, quick-witted person. I don’t know if it wasn’t perhaps because of her intellectual and level-headed personality that, despite being First Lady for a long time, she was isolated from a Korean atmosphere and appeared to be seen as a closed person. It is possible to assume that this was reason why, due to this nature of hers, she was not able to make many friends in Korea. First, the fact that she was born abroad may have been some form of wall. (…) Furthermore, her perfect and sharp nature may have contributed to keeping

[Koreans] at a respectful distance. (Ihwajang 1993: [19])

To what extent Donner-Rhee suffered from feelings of solitude and estrangement, and whether these improved or not in subsequent years, are questions beyond the scope of the present chapter. However, in light of the fact that she spent the last twenty years of her life in South Korea, it seems safe to assume that Donner-Rhee developed some form of personal, emotional attachment to Korea as her third home, notwithstanding the emotional challenges life there may have posed for her.

 

A Supporter of Syngman Rhee’s Policies

The Rhee Correspondence (KPW 1996) provides a more detailed glimpse into DonnerRhee’s personal view of contemporary issues. First, it reveals that Donner-Rhee served as a sort of private secretary or assistant to her husband; a large bulk of the correspondence contained in this collection was done by her. Letters between her and the Olivers account for a significant number of pages in this collection of primary sources. The letters reveal that she was on the same page as her husband politically in opposing any coalition government in Korea, but also in her fervent anti-Communist stance. The following examples from the period preceding the promulgation of the ROK — on the subjects of trusteeship, presidential legitimacy, and the influence of supranational organizations — illustrate this.⁴⁰

On the highly contested issue of trusteeship,⁴¹ Donner-Rhee wrote to Robert Oliver:

“the fact remains that Russian soldiers are still in Korea. The 38th parallel will be abolished and the Russian soldiers will occupy all of Korea. (…) This [sic] is the usual communist tactics.”^[37] In Donner-Rhee’s view, co-operation with the Soviets would

 

⁴⁰        Stueck’s (2000) concise essay on Syngman Rhee’s role from 1946–48 argues that Rhee had limited impact on US policy towards South Korea. According to Stueck, neither lobbying by Rhee’s friends in the US, nor the press’s reporting on Korea, played any significant role in affecting decision makers. Yet Rhee possessed “great emotional popularity” domestically. His ability to exploit this in his campaign against trusteeship contributed to shifts in US policy towards establishing a separate southern Korean nation-state, ultimately succeeding in his “gamble,” with his greatest “contribution” being the polarization of South Korean politics to such an extent that no coalition whatsoever was possible by May 1948.

⁴¹        Whether to accept trusteeship or not was at the center of Korean politics for much of the period from late 1945 to late 1947. On 27 December 1945 at the Moscow Conference, the foreign ministers of the US, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain reached an agreement on Korea — which was legally not independent at that time — that a joint commission, consisting of US and Soviet members, be established to assist the formation of a provisional Korean government: “It shall be the task of the Joint Commission (and) the provisional

Korean democratic government (…) to work out measures also for helping and assisting (trusteeship) (…) for a period of up to five years.” Cf. “Interim Meeting of Foreign Ministers of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Moscow, December 16–26, 1945,” Avalon Project, Yale Law School. Rhee strongly opposed such measures (see above footnote).

thus lead to a Communist takeover of Korea, something Rhee himself had feared since at least 1944 (Lew 2014: 228–229).^[38]

Thus, it comes as no surprise that Donner-Rhee strongly opposed Kim Kyu-sik’s 金奎植 and Yŏ Un-hyŏng’s 呂運亨 platform to form a coalition government, arguing that the authorities had ordered the release of “communists” again and that “there is no moderate group in Korea. Now there are only rightists and communists. Dr. Kimm [Kim Kyu-sik] has gone too far left — and even if he does not know it.”^[39]

Earlier, while arguing for the swift passage of a referendum to hold a separate southern election in 1947,^[40] she presents Rhee as the only legitimate leader of Korea and reveals further anti-Communist sentiments: “We are all glad that the police has discovered — what most Koreans knew all this time — that the student strikes were ordered by the North and more trouble were to be expected. Most of the recent statements against the rightists were due to cleverly played up propaganda[,] we have to be patient and let the friends find out who is really a friend and who is not in the end.”^[41]

Donner-Rhee’s black-and-white anti-Communism and strident opposition to any united front government becomes even more evident in a letter to Robert Oliver from November 1947, after the Korean question was moved to be decided by the United Nations: “Here is the same situation as in China — either Chiang [Kai-shek] or communist — as they do not want in Korea either the recognized leader or communist, they create parties who will never have the full support of the people and are selected leaders against the will of the people.”^[42] Only Rhee, if one were to judge from this letter, had the “full support of the people” and was the “recognized leader” of Korea.

In June 1948, following the May 10 elections, the Constitutional Assembly was charged with the task of creating a legislative and institutional framework for a future South Korean state. At this time, it was still uncertain whether the UN would grant diplomatic recognition to such a state, and whether key politicians such as Kim Ku and Kim Kyu-sik, who were still aiming for a coalition government with the northern side, would support it. It is against this backdrop that, during the first South Korean Assembly’s drafting of a constitution, Donner-Rhee denounced the two Kims as “rubber-stamping the orders of [a] foreign overlord.” Her vitriol continues in this vein:

 

Stourzh 2005). 

“communist propagandists,” she writes, were “agitating against the ‘American imperialism’ (…) with the hope of discrediting the Congress and the government which [South Korea] would establish.”^[43]

As becomes clear from the above anecdote, she was on the same page as her husband, who vehemently opposed any coalition with other rightists in his enduring fear of weakening a prospective South Korean state by incorporating any pro-Northern or pro-Soviet “Communist” influence. Francesca Donner-Rhee was not idly standing by her husband, but rather fully supporting his policies, as shown further in the following sections.

 

First Lady of South Korea (1948–1960)

Between 1945 and 1960, Donner-Rhee was a privileged eyewitness to the innermost circle of Korean politics. Her autobiography, however, omits political issues, focusing instead on the foods she and Rhee were eating during the First Republic.^[44] During the years leading up to the ROK’s foundation, she accompanied her husband to meetings with fellow politicians such as Kim Ku and Kim Kyu-sik.^[45] 

As First Lady, Donner-Rhee stood at her husband’s side for almost all public events. Throughout her time as First Lady, she was thus highly visible. In photographs from the period, she almost always appears next to Rhee, even at events where one would not expect this. For example, when Chiang Kai-shek visited South Korea in August 1949, Donner-Rhee was part of the official commemorative photograph (fig. 6), sitting next to Chiang.^[46]

A glimpse at official photographs reveals that at such outings Donner-Rhee was mostly wearing hanbok (figs. 7–10, 12).^[47] In a personal letter to Mrs. Oliver, dated 9 November 1947, Donner-Rhee provides insight into her fashion choices: 

The Koreans are having their Musts [sic] in their dresses. Every month there is a certain material which really goes with the season – as I cannot afford to wear Korean dresses daily (…) I have a fixed set of dresses which I wear on official occasions. I ordered a new suit which has a long skirt – I feel funny to wear it

– but I shall and I know that I will be considered a pioneer.^[48]

 

(Fig. 6) A commemorative photo taken during a visit by Chiang Kai-shek to South Korea in August 1949 in

Chinhae. Sitting to the right of Chiang, third from left, is Francesca Donner-Rhee. On the left of Chiang is

Syngman Rhee. The fact that Donner-Rhee is the only woman on the photograph and is seated next to Chiang is quite remarkable against the background of East Asian politics, which was (and remains) a highly male-dominated field. Source: Kyŏnghyang sinmun, 11 August 1973.

 

 

(Fig. 7) Francesca and Syngman Rhee in 1951 with members of the United Nations Korean Reconstruction Agency. Behind Francesca, smoking a pipe, is Robert T. Oliver, the close friend and aide of the Rhees. Source: Presidential Archives, no. CET0027177.

 

(Fig. 8) Francesca Donner-Rhee and Syngman Rhee at a semiannual service to commemorate the birthday of Confucius in 1954. One may wonder how the ordinary Korean felt about a European First Lady in such contexts. Source: Presidential Archives, no. CET0061415.

 

 

(Fig. 9) Francesca and Syngman Rhee voting in the 1956 vice-presidential elections. Donner-Rhee, as First

Lady of the ROK, had South Korean citizenship since 1948. Source: Presidential Archives, no. CET0045189.

 

(Fig. 10) Francesca, sitting behind Syngman Rhee, at an election speech in early 1960. Source: Presidential Archives, no. CET0024888.

 

 

 

 

(Fig. 11) Some of Donner-Rhee’s daily planners, as exhibited at the Ihwajang in 1993 to commemorate the first

anniversary of her death. Open is her planner from 1980. As with the letters contained in the Rhee Correspondence from 1944–65 (KPW 1996), it is written in English. Source: Ihwajang (1993: [11]).

           

How was Francesca Rhee, the First Lady, seen and judged by Koreans when wearing hanbok? Participants who witnessed her first official role after moving to Korea, at the inaugural assembly of the Women’s Healthcare Association (Pokŏn Puinhoe 保健婦人會)^[49] on 31 March 1946, remember seeing a “thin [woman] wearing a blue shirt,” and wondering “how can such a person [marry somebody like Syngman Rhee] …?” It is reported that this impression among Koreans changed after she “polished” her appearance and “started wearing hanbok.”^[50] 

A newspaper article from October 1949, giving an account of an anniversary event celebrating four years since Rhee’s return to Korea, contradicts the above statement: even though Donner-Rhee is described as wearing a pale green hanbok, she is seen as a “white” (foreigner), a hoju-t’aek 濠洲宅, literally “the person from Australia” (Im 2005: 315–316). Besides the mundane confusion of Austria and

Australia, which she mentions herself (DonnerRhee 2007: 44), the term hoju-t’aek incorporates a latent discrimination: Donner-Rhee was not seen as a fellow Korean, either by ordinary people or by people close to her in the ruling elite (Im 2005: 315–316). Whether her decision to wear hanbok helped her gain acceptance or not is thus a complex issue.

During the Korean War, Donner-Rhee kept a diary, yet her published memoirs omit this phase almost entirely, instead criticizing prevailing historical views on the period: “It is sad that

 

(Fig. 12) A newspaper article on an event commemorating the fourth anniversary of Rhee’s return to Korea. Chayu sinmun, 18 October 1949.

people who do not even know anything about [Syngman Rhee] recklessly write lies that look plausible to the unknowing. If the people writing those texts had any

 

conscience, they would write responsible texts after checking with witnesses who have been clearly at the actual spot of history” (Donner-Rhee 2007: 39–40). Her war diary, written in English, is partly included in the Rhee Correspondence. ^[51] A Korean translation of the full text, originally appearing in the Chungang ilbo beginning in September 1983, was published in 2010 as 6.25 wa Yi Sŭng-man. P’ŭranch’esŭk’a ŭi nanjung ilgi [The Korean War and Syngman Rhee: Francesca’s War Diary] (DonnerRhee 2010). As noted, Donner-Rhee’s memoirs leave out the hardships of the war years, but describe in detail episodes such as Rhee’s birthday celebration in Busan in March 1951 (Donner-Rhee 2007: 71).

As First Lady, Donner-Rhee had no official role in Korean politics. The only semiofficial title, bestowed upon her in 1949, was that of honorary president of the Korean Women’s Organization (Taehan Puinhoe 大韓婦人會), one of many state-sponsored anti-Communist mass organizations during the First Republic.^[52]

Although she relinquished her own career prospects and accepted her role as a wife who was not to speak her thoughts aloud, Donner-Rhee also showed an interest in raising the status of Korean women. During his Korean stay in the summer of 1946, Robert Oliver observes:

[Donner-Rhee] feels that there is a chance to do a great deal to raise the status of Korean women and she means to do it. (…) She believes, consequently, that the most important thing to do is to win the confidence and respect of the Korean wives. The husbands will then be herded along the right paths! She says the women are already organized into political groups, and that, given the chance, they will be the real bulwark of a democratic system. (Oliver 1978: 33– 34)

What about her influence on Rhee’s politics? Whether on behalf of her husband or on her own initiative, Donner-Rhee seems to have frequently passed on classified information to outsiders, as Ambassador Muccio notes: “She quite frequently telephoned just to tip me off that he [Syngman Rhee] was about to do something that she thought I should know about” (Cumings 1990: 232–233). Furthermore, DonnerRhee was passing information to Muccio through the apostolic delegate, Father Patrick Byrne, which Bruce Cumings identifies as one reason why much information on

Rhee’s inner circle leaked before the war (ibid., 599). While the CIA tended to overemphasize Donner-Rhee’s influence, seeing her “as a major and clever figure, an Austrian Empress Dowager,” Robert Oliver’s opinion, in an interview with Cumings in 1985, was that “Rhee never paid much attention to her views, thinking she

 

hopelessly misunderstood Korean politics” (ibid., 230). But Donner-Rhee was also corresponding with US firms who wanted to run tungsten mines in South Korea (ibid., 149), and, in early 1950, in an anonymous letter written on official presidential paper,⁵⁸ she was accused of protecting the police chief and anti-Communist terror regime (ibid., 218).

Newspaper articles from the period after Rhee’s resignation provide further assessments of her life as First Lady and her influence on Rhee.⁵⁹ Immediately after the Rhees left for Hawaii, the Kyŏnghyang sinmun describes Francesca Rhee, together with her confidante Park Maria 朴瑪利亞,^[53] as having had “greater influence than Marie

Antoinette,” carefully selecting the information that was to reach her husband.^[54] Allegedly, Donner-Rhee and Park Maria were responsible for much of the corruption of the First Republic.^[55]

Five years after Rhee’s death, a series of articles considered in detail her influence on the politics of the First Republic. Chang T’aek-sang 張澤相 (1893–1969), first foreign minister of the ROK (in office 15 August–24 December 1948), resigned after refusing to give in to pressure from Donner-Rhee^[56] (who had telephoned him) to appoint Chŏng Hang-pŏm 鄭恒範 as ambassador to Taiwan. ^[57] Moreover, while Syngman Rhee was visiting the US in late 1946, Francesca refused to give his address to Sin Hŭng-u 申興雨 (1883–1959), a close childhood friend of Rhee’s since his days at Paejae College 培材學堂, saying that every letter to the president must pass through her hands.^[58] And in yet another example, when vote-counting in the 1958 national

 

⁵⁸        This accusation was made by a woman named “Angela” from Rhee’s inner circle, whose true identity is unknown. Source: RG319, entry 47, box 3: letter, “Angela” to Ray Richards, January 27, 1950, quoted in Cumings (1990: 218).

⁵⁹        In Korean newspapers, most articles about Donner-Rhee appeared between 1960 and 1970, when she was living in Hawaii and Vienna. On the other hand, her name is rarely mentioned at all during the First Republic, and interest in her declined after she returned to Korea.

assembly elections was interrupted in a number of cities, Donner-Rhee attempted to turn away a close relative of Rhee’s who visited to tell him what had happened.^[59]

Contrary to Oliver’s opinion quoted above, Korean media in the 1960s took the view that Rhee, who was known to be stubborn and whom even his closest aides described as a hopeless agitator (Oliver 1978: 178–179), trusted his wife blindly.^[60] During his time as president, it is reported, she “watched” him around the clock — which to the Kyŏnghyang sinmun could be interpreted both as “love for her husband,” but also a “major reason for the deplorable condition” South Korea found itself in during the late 1950s.^[61]  She was described as obsessed with President Rhee’s health,^[62] and having a “permanent victim mentality.”^[63] 

Despite Donner-Rhee’s alleged influence on Rhee’s politics and her visibility as First Lady, the scholar Yi Yŏng-hae, as quoted in a newspaper article, describes her as a First Lady largely “living in seclusion,” shutting herself off from the world around her.^[64] A Kyŏnghyang sinmun article from 1965 reinforces the claim that Donner-Rhee largely isolated herself from society. ^[65] The Rhee Correspondence reveals that, throughout her time as First Lady, Donner-Rhee remained in close contact only with the Olivers. It is likely that, as a European in Korea, she felt some sense of isolation throughout her years as First Lady, as observed by Ambassador Muccio in 1949. 

 

The April Revolution and Exile in Hawaii (1960–1965)

After twelve years in power, Rhee ran for president in his fourth election on 15 March 1960. Initially, Rhee faced two opponents. But Cho Pong-am 曺奉岩, who had been his opponent in the 1956 election, was being accused of being a communist and executed in July 1959, and Cho Pyong-ok 趙炳玉 died of a heart attack shortly before the election in February 1960, leaving Rhee the only candidate, with 100% of the electoral vote. The vice-presidential candidate, his protégé Yi Ki-pong 李起鵬 (aka Yi Ki-Poong 1896–1960), leader of the ruling Liberal Party, won by an abnormally wide margin of over 8 million votes. Electoral fraud was obvious, and protests against corruption erupted in Masan on election day. 

 

Roughly one month later, on 11 April, the body of Kim Chu-yŏl 金朱烈, a student in Masan, was found with his skull split open by a tear-gas grenade. Nationwide protests erupted; on 19 April, there were over one hundred thousand protesters, mostly students, in Seoul alone. While the government attempted to declare martial law, professors and ordinary citizens joined the protests, which soon became large-scale. On 26 April, Rhee announced his resignation, and Yi Ki-pong was blamed for most of the corruption in the government.

The April Revolution also had a deeply personal aspect for the Rhees. Francesca and Syngman Rhee had no children of their own. They had adopted the biological son of Yi Ki-pong and Park Maria, Yi Kang-sŏk 李康石 (1937–1960), on the occasion of Rhee’s eighty-third birthday in March 1957.^[66] However, only three years later, a tragic event resulted in the loss of their adopted son. Hours before Rhee announced his resignation, Yi Kang-sŏk shot his birth parents, his younger brother, and himself, in a murder-suicide at Kyŏngmudae. Donner-Rhee vividly describes the shock she was feeling on hearing this news, stating that it bewildered and traumatized her until the end of her life. She felt that it was the youth who should have lived on, rather than themselves (Donner-Rhee 2007: 99–101). According to her, Rhee’s decision to resign came earlier, after visiting student demonstrators in hospital, but the tragic murdersuicide by their adopted son strengthened his will to do so.

After Rhee’s resignation, the couple initially returned to the Ihwajang. There, they received sympathetic visitors over the following weeks (Donner-Rhee 2007: 102– 103). ^[67] Donner-Rhee’s record of the days immediately following the resignation captures, first and foremost, her joy in having a Korean-style ondol heated floor, as opposed to the tatami room in the Kyŏngmudae residence, and mundane but pleasant episodes such as sitting in a park and being asked by a girl to share their portable radio. 

While Donner-Rhee enjoyed the sudden leisure in their hitherto hectic lifestyle, she also remembers feeling, in these days, that South Korea was “in need of a strong leader to protect the country’s rights and liberty from external pressure or any other form of outside attack” (104), thus showing a complete lack of understanding of why Rhee had been ousted from power:

My husband couldn’t breathe because he was so worried about the coming days.

Back then, our country was not only endangered by the Communists, but also

 

by the influence of great powers who only wanted to serve their own country’s interests. (104)

During April and May, she writes, the two planned to go to Hawaii for a month due to Rhee’s deteriorating health, so that Rhee could receive much-needed treatment. (He was eighty-five years old at the time they left South Korea.) It is unclear, however, whether this was the only reason for them to leave, since Donner-Rhee herself acknowledged that she could not disclose “everything” about those days (109).

According to US documents, Donner-Rhee phoned Ambassador McConaughy’s wife on 25 May to ask for assistance in arranging US military air transportation to

Hawaii, explaining that Rhee “was under great pressure from friends and former political associates to reenter the political arena, and wanted to remove himself from that strain.”^[68] Acting president Hŏ Chŏng 許政 then explained to the ambassador that it was imperative that the Rhees leave South Korea as their presence was unsettling and even destabilizing, and that Hŏ’s government would take full responsibility for the Rhees’ departure so that it would not look like the US was assisting Rhee in evading Korean judicial processes. The State Department endorsed the above position, and was willing to give visas for the Rhees but not official transportation.⁷⁶

After receiving an invitation from Choi Paek-ryŏl, the president of the Hawaii branch of the Taehanin Tongjihoe 大韓人同志會, Francesca and Syngman Rhee left the Ihwajang for Kimp’o Airport on the morning of 29 May 1960, planning to return in about four weeks. On the plane, Donner-Rhee’s parting words to a crowd of Korean journalists, before taking off, were apparently “I love Korea.”^[69] In Honolulu, they settled at 2033 Makiki Street, in a house rented to them by Choi and former acquaintances (Donner-Rhee 2007: 111).

Four weeks became months, and months became years. With Rhee’s declining health making a return to Korea increasingly unlikely, the couple made the decision while in Hawaii to adopt Yi In-su 李仁秀 (1931–), a descendant of Prince Yangnyŏng, as their new son.^[70] According to her memoirs, this adoption gave Rhee renewed vigor. 

The couple planned to return to South Korea on 17 March 1962. However, on the morning of their planned departure, they were informed through Yi In-su and Choi Paek-ryŏl that Rhee had been declared a persona non grata by ROK Deputy Chairman

Park Chung-hee, who had come to power just one year earlier following the May 18

 

coup d’état. This change in Rhee’s status had apparently also been influenced by US officials, who were pressuring Park to normalize relations with Japan in order to receive much-needed funds, and allegedly feared that Rhee’s return could jeopardize such negotiations (ibid., 119).^[71] In this de facto forced exile, Rhee died three years later, at the age of ninety, on 19 July 1965.

In the five years in Honolulu, the Rhees lived a reclusive life in a cottage rented from acquaintances, rarely accepting any visitors. A Japanese journalist reported that the Rhees were met with different reactions from the Korean community in Hawaii: while some indeed welcomed them, a handful of Koreans started a petition to get rid of them. Others put it this way:   “[it is] not that we do not want them here, but

(Fig. 13) Francesca and Syngman Rhee in Hawaii, March 1963. In this period, she spent most of her days caring for her aged husband. Source: Kyŏnghyang sinmun, 21 July 1965.

we watch them critically, feeling inconvenience and keeping them at a respectful distance.”[72][73]  Syngman Rhee’s health deteriorated rapidly

after 1963. Francesca dedicated herself fully to caring for him (fig. 13), so much so that she fainted due to exhaustion as soon as Rhee’s funeral was over on 22 July 1965, and had to be hospitalized for a few days, with the doctor describing her as “mentally and physically extremely tired.”⁸¹ 

 

Return to Vienna (1965–1970)

In the weeks and months that followed Syngman Rhee’s passing, Donner-Rhee’s future was unclear. Would she be allowed to return to Korea, and if so would she wish to do so? Or would she decide rather to remain in the US? If she were to remain, would she continue living in Hawaii or instead return to their house in Washington D.C.? Moreover, two central issues would become important for her over the next five years. First, legal matters: inheritance, the processing of property, and pension entitlement. Second, how would she be welcomed (or not) as the widow of Syngman Rhee, who by the mid-1960s was no more than an overturned dictator for most South Koreans?

Furthermore, how would Koreans accept her as a “non-Korean,” a “Westerner,” even though she was technically a South Korean citizen?

 

Following her husband’s death, Donner-Rhee initially stated her wish to return to South Korea.⁸² However, being hospitalized from 23 to 27 July 1965, she was not able to accompany her husband’s body to Seoul and could not attend the funeral there. The Kyŏnghyang sinmun reflected on Donner-Rhee’s possible future in an editorial, arguing that because she had “no friends” in Korea, the only possible reason for her return could be her adopted son Yi In-su. But the editorial then dismisses this thought, considering it unlikely because “she would not be able to develop affection [chŏng]”⁸³ for this adopted son since their relationship was “a merely legal matter.”^[74] The only practical reason for her to return to South Korea at that time appeared to be, in the eyes of the editorialist, to deal with the processing of inheritance and property, on a temporary basis.

Donner-Rhee, claiming that “returning to Korea became impossible,” ultimately left Hawaii for Vienna on 11 September.^[75] By this time, her story was also being reported in the Kronen Zeitung, Austria’s most widely circulated (tabloid) newspaper. According to an article from 15 September, Donner-Rhee was to arrive in Austria on 14 September, but her flight from Bangkok to Beirut could not take off due to the fighting in the India-Pakistan War.^[76] In the end, she arrived in Vienna “secretly” on Sunday 19 September 1965, and settled into an apartment in the first district.^[77]

 

⁸²        “‘Han’guk sŏ yŏsaeng ponaego sipta’: P’ŭ yŏsa ŭi somang” ‘韓國서 餘生 보내고 싶다’ 프女史 의所望, Kyŏnghyang sinmun, 22 July 1965.

⁸³        Usually translated into English as affection or attachment, chŏng 情 is often claimed to be unique and untranslatable. The term exists in China and Japan as well, however. The discourse about chŏng reveals a highly ambiguous concept involving some form of loyalty, or love, or an emotional bond with somebody else; morover, chŏng is considered to manifest itself not only in individual interaction and personal relations, but also in collective behavior, shaping cultural codes and customs. In an English dictionary of Korea’s cultural code words, chŏng is defined in terms of “especially strong bonds with (ones) families, kin, schoolmates, teachers, work colleagues, and other people from their birthplace (that) were of special importance because the people could not depend on laws, government agencies, or outsiders to assist them in times of need.” In addition, “chŏng was also the basis for (…) ‘harmony’ in Korean society,” involving an emotional element “that made it possible for groupism to take precedence over individual interests, even overriding the concept of personal identity” (Lafayette De Mente 1998: 55–56). 

Despite what the Kronen Zeitung had initially reported, she would not spend the rest of her life in Vienna, but she did remain there for most of the next five years. During this period, her life was rather closely watched by parts of the South Korean media. In late September, Kyŏnghyang sinmun published an extensive editorial piece about her, in which she was not referred to as “madam” (yŏsa 女史), as usual, but instead as  “old woman” (nop’a 老婆). According to this article, South Korean society was divided into a large bloc — including former secretaries at Kyŏngmudae, former ministers, and close acquaintances of the Rhees — who claimed “it all came to this because of her,” and a smaller group who sided with Donner-Rhee. Emphasizing the often-ignored voice of ordinary Koreans, the article states that many people attending

Rhee’s funeral did not want his wife to return to Seoul. Furthermore, she was featured briefly in a newspaper article tracing the whereabouts of former members of the ROK

“elite.” In the article, she was profiled residing in the “befriended nation of Austria.”^[78]

On 26 September, the Austrian tabloid Kronen Zeitung reported an attempted attack on Donner-Rhee’s life by South Korean secret agents (fig. 14).^[79] This turned out to be little more than a hoax, according to Korean newspapers.^[80] Having been described as living a reclusive life in South Korea and Hawaii, Donner-Rhee may have been motivated by this report: she moved to the outskirts of Vienna only two days later, citing “an overly excessive interest by journalists towards her.”^[81]  

According to Yu Yang-ju, former ambassador of the ROK to Vienna, Donner-Rhee kept her distance from Koreans while in Vienna. While she did visit the South Korean embassy countless times, she was very secretive towards the ambassador, and did not even tell him her private address (Ihwajang 1993: [18]). However, she was observed by a North Korean special agent (from the embassy in Vienna), and since the ambassador had this information, we can assume that the South Korean agents were also on her heels, all the more so since the South Koreans were afraid that the North Koreans might consider an abduction of Donner-Rhee. With the border to the Czech Republic being so close, the South Korean ambassador saw a clear risk there.

 

 

 

(Fig. 14) A full-page newspaper article on Francesca Donner-Rhee’s “return” to Austria.  Kronen Zeitung, 26 September 1965.

 

For a large part of her time in Vienna, Donner-Rhee appears to have been in treatment, suffering from neuralgia and insomnia, among other ailments. In 1967, her condition was described by Yi In-su as shock resulting from the death of people close to her, most likely the long-term effects of the tragic events of April 1960, in which Yi Kang-sŏk murdered her closest aide, Park Maria, and subsequently committed suicide.^[82] Donner-Rhee was further said to be eschewing any outside contacts, only visiting a church regularly to be “in dialogue with God.”^[83] Her daily life consisted of spending time with her sister Betty and hikes in the forest around Vienna. 

symbolic document during the Cold War in a
city in which North Koreans were also present. Donner-Rhee was the first to receive this ID card, at a time when she increasingly	(Fig. 15) Donner-Rhee visiting her husband’s grave in March 1966.  Compared to her appearance in 1960, she had aged significantly. Part of a newspaper article (Tonga ilbo, 21 March 1966) on her visit to Korea.

Yet she retained an interest in Korean affairs. In 1969, it was reported that she cut out all      Austrian newspaper   articles concerning Korean affairs, and “regarded her Korean ID card, issued at the Korean Embassy for Koreans living abroad, as very precious, wearing a Korean scarf and carrying

a Korean handbag [when picking it up].”^[84]

In his capacity as ROK ambassador to Austria, Yu Yang-ju had met Donner-Rhee countless times over the years 1965–1970. In one anecdote, Yu reminiscences about South Korean ID cards issued by the embassy for expats living in Vienna. According to Yu, this card was a document without any legal value. Yet, the South Korean government had decided to hand it to Koreans in Vienna. As a document stating “I am a citizen of the Republic of Korea,” it was supposed to be a

began thinking about her return to Korea

(Ihwajang 1993: [20]). Yu had an interest in helping Donner-Rhee in her return to South Korea permanently, highlighting her symbolic statues as a former president’s spouse: 

Personally, [Austria was] her home country, but seen nationally [= from a Korean perspective], that [a former First Lady] is living a reclusive life in another country was first of all a dubious appearance. It was a problem that had to be considered from the perspective of both international face and domestic morality. (…) A president or his/her spouse cannot, no matter the circumstances of their resignation, become a private individual. She cannot, for the rest of her life, erase the title of ‘former First Lady.’ (Ihwajang 1993: [19])

 

While living in Vienna, Donner-Rhee managed to visit South Korea twice. The first time, she stayed in Seoul from 21 March to 2 April 1966, mostly to visit her husband’s grave (fig. 15), but also to deal with inheritance issues. She spent one night in Tōkyō, where she was welcomed by Ambassador An, who recommended that she not wear black as mourning garb, but white instead. Arriving in Korea the next day, she was welcomed by approximately three hundred people, amongst them many members of the Korea Women’s Association; also, five hundred policemen were assigned to her protection.^[85] On 22 March, she was refused a meeting with First Lady Yuk Yŏng-su 陸英修,⁹⁶ but two days later was received by President Park Chung-hee (figs. 16-17), who offered her the option of spending the rest of her life in Korea.^[86] During her stay, Donner-Rhee was reportedly advised to take up this opportunity, both by former members of the Liberal Party^[87] and by Yi Yu-sŏn 李裕善 (1903–1974), former member of the Constitutional Assembly and head of the Chŏnju Yi clan (to which Rhee belonged).^[88] Furthermore, she is reported to have met with prime minister Chŏng Ilkwŏn 丁一權 and the mayor of Seoul.^[89] 

 

 

(Figs. 16, 17) Park Chung-hee meeting Francesca Donner-Rhee in March 1966 and July 1967, inviting her to spend her remaining years in Korea. Right: A photo from the 1967 visit. Private collection, reproduced in An 2011 (246). Left: A newspaper report on the meeting in 1966 (Kyŏnghyang sinmun, 25 March 1966). 

 

 

Donner-Rhee travelled to Seoul a second time from 17 to 29 July 1967, for the second anniversary of Rhee’s death. This time, she is reported to have stayed mostly inside her hotel room,^[90] but met again with Park Chung-hee, with whom she shared 

 

her plan to return to Korea within three years.^[91] Despite being able to make the above two trips to Korea, Donner-Rhee was not able to attend the wedding of her adoptive son Yi In-su to Cho Hye-ja 曺惠子 (1942–) in 1968.^[92]

 

The Inheritance Issue and Final Years in South Korea (1970–1992)

As stated above, inheritance was a key issue at stake for Donner-Rhee as a widow.

Who was beneficiary to Rhee’s wealth? How much was it? What should be considered property of the state, and what go to his family? Only two weeks after Rhee passed away, the Tonga ilbo reported on the alleged content of Rhee’s will, consisting of little more than three short paragraphs, which named his wife as the sole beneficiary.^[93] 

While the Kyungyang sinmun openly questioned, in September, why Donner-Rhee was not disclosing the document,^[94] another revelation was widely reported, including by the Tonga ilbo and the Kyŏnghyang sinmun: Rhee’s family register.^[95] Koreans were surprised to learn of his marriage to Park Sŭng-sŏn, which had lasted from 1890 to 1910, and that Park had entered an adopted son into Rhee’s family register. However, in 1949, Rhee had erased all six of his former family members from his register, changing his registry district from Tongdaemun District to Chongno District, and, in April 1950, he had formally registered Donner-Rhee as his wife. Another surprise was that the Rhees’ newly adopted son Yi In-su was not included in this register — the unfortunate side-effect of Rhee living his last years in exile in Hawaii.

On 8 March 1967, two years after Rhee’s death, the contents of his will were made public. His wife was indeed the sole inheritor of his wealth.^[96] On her two trips from Austria to Korea she avoided talking about this issue openly, partly because it was unclear what exactly Rhee’s estate comprised, and what belonged to the ROK government. Ultimately, though, she accepted the necessity of negotiations with the government, conceding, “even if I lose three scrolls [of poems my husband wrote], I want to go back to Korea.”^[97]

 

女史, Kyŏngyang sinmun, 29 July 1967.

A further domestic political issue was a law regarding pension benefits to former presidential spouses. Already in May 1960, a group of pro-Rhee supporters demanded the establishment of such a law, but failed. However, after Rhee’s death, in a meeting of undersecretaries, a first draft of this law was composed.^[98] This draft became law in late January 1969, formalizing payments to former First Ladies — essentially, at that time, only Yun Po-sŏn’s wife, Kong Dŏk-kwi, and Francesca Donner-Rhee.^[99]

Around the same time, in March 1969, Donner-Rhee announced that she would return to Korea in the summer,^[100] but again had to postpone travel due to illness.^[101] Eventually, on 25 March 1970, concrete plans for her return to South Korea were made public by Mail Kyŏngjae^[102] and, on 16 May, the seventy-year-old Francesca DonnerRhee returned to Seoul, where she would spend the rest of her life as a South Korean citizen at the Ihwajang with her adopted son Yi In-su and his family.^[103]

 

Death and Memory of Francesca Donner-Rhee in Korea and Austria

(Fig. 18) Donner-Rhee’s funeral at Seoul National Cemetery. Source: Tonga ilbo, 24 March 1992.

requesting that the Korean flag and the Bible used by Rhee during his time as an

Twenty-two years after her return to Korea, at the age of ninety-two, Francesca Donner-Rhee died on 19 March 1992 in the presence of her Korean family. Four days later, on 23 March, she was buried at the Seoul National Cemetery, next to her husband in the presidential honorary grave (fig. 18).^[104] Donner-Rhee left a will

independence activist be placed in her

coffin. Her final request was for her coffin to be covered with a scroll of calligraphy by her husband, saying nambuk t’ong’il, “Korean reunification.”^[105]

 

To commemorate the first anniversary of her death, an exhibition of Donner-Rhee’s possessions was held at the Ihwajang from 19 March to 30 April 1993.^[106] Besides highlighting various stages of her life, in particular her Austrian origin and her life in the Ihwajang, this exhibition depicted Donner-Rhee as a thrifty figure. ^[107] In the memoirs, her daughter-in-law Cho Hye-ja introduces an “informal will” Donner-Rhee left her following the assassination of Park Chung-hee’s wife Yuk Yŏng-su 陸英修 in 1974. Yuk’s funeral was a state-sponsored event of extraordinarily large scale, which obviously prompted Donner-Rhee to tell Cho: 

If I die, do not use any flowers! If you calculate those in money, think about how expensive that is! Before wasting money on such useless things, rather use it to help people in need. (Donner-Rhee 2007: 142)

According to Cho, Donner-Rhee was a penny-pincher, using a refrigerator they received from Chiang Kai-shek in 1949 for thirty-five years, and a beach umbrella she received from her adopted son Yi In-su in 1961 for over thirty years (ibid.).

Donner-Rhee had been portrayed in Korean media before, in the MBC TV drama The First Republic (Che-1 konghwaguk, 1981–1982). After her death, her biography became the subject of TV documentaries on KBS (1994)^[108] and CTN (1999).^[109] What is Donner-Rhee’s image in contemporary South Korean society? A computational text analysis of Korean newspaper articles between 2000 and 2017 (Pak 2018) reveals that she was of only minor interest to the Korean media. She was featured in only 798 articles, compared to 14,859 for Yuk Yŏng-su (wife of Park Chung-hee), 45,710 articles dealing with Syngman Rhee, and 140,856 with Park Chung-hee. Furthermore, while 47.1% of the articles on Rhee tend toward the positive and 52.8% toward the negative, a full 71.7% of the articles on Donner-Rhee are positive. This figure contradicts the general message of articles criticizing her political influence that appeared in 1960s newspapers. The Museum of Contemporary Korean History in central Seoul, designed and realized under the conservative Lee Myung-bak administration, features Syngman Rhee prominently in the years from 1945 to 1953. However, his wife Francesca Donner-Rhee is nowhere to be seen in the museum. This, alongside the low number of newspaper articles mentioning her name, suggests that Donner-Rhee is not well known among contemporary South Koreans. As of 2020, the

 

Ihwajang Museum, once her home, was closed, no longer open to the public due to flood damage from 2011.^[110]

In Austria, to commemorate the 120th anniversary of relations between Austria and Korea in 2012, a small walkway next to the newly opened Korea Kulturhaus, located in the Donaupark in Vienna’s 21st district, was named after her. Beyond this, DonnerRhee is largely unknown. The newspaper Die Presse, for example, only mentions her name when the Korean ambassador writes a column on relations between Austria and Korea.^[111]

 

Concluding Remarks

Francesca Donner-Rhee has a remarkable twentieth-century biography. Born in 1900 in Vienna, her formative years coincided with the last years of the multinational Habsburg Empire. During Austria’s First Republic, she was educated in economics and languages to succeed her father in his business. But when her father died, she instead began working at the League of Nations in Geneva.

There, in February 1933, she met her future husband Syngman Rhee, at that time a stateless activist for Korean independence. The two stayed in contact over the following months and gradually fell in love. Against her mother’s will, they became engaged, and, overcoming bureaucratic hurdles regarding her visa, were married in New York in October 1934. Spending the years to 1945 mostly in Hawaii and Washington D.C., Donner-Rhee became an assistant to and companion in her husband’s activities.

After liberation came in August 1945, the couple went to Korea. Donner-Rhee shared her husband’s anti-Communism and opposition to any coalition government. When Rhee ultimately became president of the newly established Republic of Korea in August 1948, Francesca Donner-Rhee became the first South Korean First Lady. Although not carrying any official status, she had a significant influence on the president: his communications often went via her and she was reported to have arranged his visitors.

As a Western woman in a country with such a strong, ethnic-centered nationalism as South Korea, Donner-Rhee must have faced complex identity issues. On the one hand, she was highly visible in her official functions, often dressed in Korean clothes. At the same time, however, she privately lived a largely reclusive life, close to only her husband Rhee and her friend Park Maria, and maintaining intense correspondence with two confidants in the US (the Olivers). 

 

Following the April Revolution of 1960, Donner-Rhee ultimately went into exile in Hawaii. There, she cared for the aging Rhee until his death in July 1965, before returning temporarily to Vienna and undergoing treatment for neuralgia. Traveling to South Korea in 1966 and 1967 to visit her late husband’s grave and deal with inheritance issues, she eventually, by invitation of Park Chung-hee, returned to Seoul in 1970. She spent her last twenty-two years there, living with her adopted son Yi Insu at the Ihwajang, before dying at age ninety-two in 1992.

Due to a lack of previous scholarship about her life, this chapter represents merely a first step, leaving the door open for further research. At the center of political power, Francesca Donner-Rhee was a witness to key events in Korean contemporary history. Additional primary sources can surely be found in Seoul, leaving at least three tasks for future research: first, to paint an even more detailed picture of Donner-Rhee’s life; second, to analyze her war diary, as well as other possible diaries and personal correspondence that the author was not able to obtain for the present paper; and third, to delve further into her role and activities as First Lady of South Korea.  

 

 

 

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“Alien Case File for Francesca Rhee.” Records of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, 2003–2004. Alien Case Files, 1944–2009. National Archives Identifier: 6336263. Local Identifier: A13053834/085-12-002/Box 25. The National Archives. Avalon Project, Yale Law School  http://avalon.law.yale.edu Encyclopedia of Korean Culture        http://encykorea.aks.ac.kr/

Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS)  https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments  Parish records, Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Vienna   http://data.matricula-online.eu/de/oesterreich/wien/23-inzersdorf/  The National Assembly Information System. 

        http://www.law.go.kr/

 

 

Online Resources:

(Referenced as of 20 June 2020.)

 

#1, Tauf-Buch der Pfarre Inzersdorf b/ Wien 1900, Pfarre Wien 23/Inzersdorf, Fol. 117.  http://data.matricula-online.eu/de/oesterreich/wien/23-inzersdorf/01-25/?pg=121 #3, Sterbe Buch vom Jahre 1916 ~ incl. 1930, Pfarre Wien 23/Inzersdorf, Fol. 132.  http://data.matricula-online.eu/de/oesterreich/wien/23-inzersdorf/03-14/?pg=137

#3, Wikipedia (Deutsch), s.v. “Franziska Donner”  https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franziska_Donner

#4, “Naturalization Records on Microfilm / National Archives”  https://www.archives.gov/research/naturalization/naturalization.html

#5, “Taehan nyŭsu che-1688-ho: Ihwajang kongae.”

           https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0wdWp69H_M

#6, “Ihwajang kugyŏng hagi.”  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVfS3uPbZAQ

#7, “Taehan nyŭsu che-51-ho: Miguk ŭi sŏnmul ŭl pannŭn ŏrin’i hapch’angdan.”  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oq33neDopPY 

#8, “Taehan nyŭsu che-83-ho: Ŏmŏninal kinyŏm haengsa.”    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cF60ORlJtHU 

#9, “Taehan nyŭsu che-110-ho: Taet’ongnyŏng kakka t’ansin kyŏngch’uk haengsa, 4-wŏl 22-il.”  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHiqfYCh8P4 

#10, “Yi Sŭng-man ch’odae taet’ongnyŏng adŭl Yi In-su paksa.”  https://www.yna.co.kr/view/AKR20080118092500917 

#11, “Ihwajang anjuin Cho Hye-ja, kŭ ŭi namp’yŏn Yi In-su.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mh2In4XnGmo

#12, “Taehan nyŭsu che-1952-ho: Ihwajang yup’um chŏnsihoe.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_c-xARpB0s

 

 

Acknowledgments: The author would like to extend his gratitude to Werner Koidl for drawing his attention to the subject. The present paper was initially conceived as a segment of the chapter by Koidl and Vierthaler in this volume. The author also thanks Andreas Schirmer for his valuable input during various stages of the project, Mizuno

Naoki at Ritsumeikan University for drawing his attention to Robert Oliver’s close relationship with the Rhees, and Jaclyn Sakura Knitter, Christine Anne Knight, and James Lavender for proofreading and copy-editing the manuscript in cooperation with the editor.

 

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[1] Rhee objected to trusteeship as early as late 1945, essentially “polarizing politics below the thirty-eighth parallel in a manner that eliminated prospects for a center coalition” (Stueck 2002: 59) in the subsequent years leading up to the ROK promulgation.

[2] In August 1949, Rhee dissolved the Special Investigation Committee for Acts against the People (Pan-minjok Haengwija T’ŭkpyŏl Chosa Wiwonhoe), which had only begun its work in January 1949 and was tasked with punishment of former pro-Japanese collaborators. Cf. Song (2013) for a treatment of how this failure continues to haunt South Korean society up until the 2010s. Cf. also Chung (2002) on the role of former collaborators in the South Korean police, army, and bureaucracy

[3] The boycott of the May 10 elections by Kim Kyu-sik 金奎植 and Kim Ku 金九 is a good example of this, as are the assassinations of Rhee’s strongest rivals Yŏ Un-hyŏng 呂運亨 in July 1947 and Kim Ku in June 1949. Cf. Cumings (1981: chapters 3, 5–7, 10; 1990: chapters 6, 7, 12, 15) and KPW (2003) for thorough analysis of this period in Korean contemporary history.

[4] Most notoriously, amongst many others, the suppression of the Yŏsu/Sunch’ŏn Rebellion and the quelling of the Uprising on Jeju Island (April 3 Incident) in 1948 (Merrill 1980); also the Podo League massacres (cf. Kim 2002; Kang 2004) in the summer of 1950.

[5] Tauf-Buch der Pfarre Inzersdorf b/ Wien 1900, Pfarre Wien 23/Inzersdorf, Fol. 117, no. 355. Accessible online at URL #1.

[6] Sterbe Buch vom Jahre 1916 ~ incl. 1930, Pfarre Wien 23/Inzersdorf, Fol. 132, no. 22. Accessible online at URL #2.

[7] Grieser (2000: 23) provides the information that Donner-Rhee was “studying languages,” finishing her education with a PhD. However, the archives at the University of Vienna have no proof that she was ever enrolled at the university. Donner-Rhee might have had her education at the separate school of translation, but no records exist for this institution. Correspondence UAZl. 61/1261/19.

[8] Grieser (2000: 23) uses the term Belles de la Societé des Nations to describe Francesca’s work at the League of Nations, which he glosses as a “a mixture of translator, diplomat, and hostess.” However, this term could not be verified anywhere by the author.

[9] Cf. the top fig. in Donner-Rhee (2007:[x]).

[10] The author has not yet acquired documentary evidence to back this claim. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture does not include this name in its entry about her. However, a newspaper article in the Chungang ilbo from the time of her death mentions that she received this name from Rhee after they moved to Korea in 1946. Cf. “Yi Pu-ran yŏsa (punsudae),” Chungang ilbo, 19 March 1992.

[11] There it is incorrectly stated, as of 20 June 2020: “Nach dem Besuch einer Klosterschule studierte die Tochter des Inzersdorfer Sodawasserfabrikanten Josef Donner, der mit einer gebürtigen Italienerin verheiratet war, die wegen ihrer Ehe ihre Opernkarriere aufgegeben hatte, Sprachen und machte den Dr. phil.” (URL #3).

[12] Email correspondence with the Austrian genealogist Felix Gundacker, 13 March 2019.

[13] “De la Mandchourie à la Corée,” La Tribune d’Orient, 22 January 1933.

[14] Robert T. Oliver (1909–2000) and his first wife Mary Laack met the Rhees in midSeptember 1942, shortly after Rhee had published his book Japan Inside Out (Oliver 1978: 2–3). Oliver was working as assistant director of the Victory Speakers Bureau in the Office of Civilian Defense and serving as chief of the National Food Conservation Office in the War Foods Department. From 1949 onwards, he was a professor at Pennsylvania State University, where he specialized in rhetoric and communication, authoring books on international rhetoric and intercultural communication. Oliver was both a close personal friend and professional associate of Rhee until the latter’s death in 1965, lobbying his case at the Korean Commission in Washington during the years leading up to the promulgation of the ROK, as well as serving as his advisor in 1949. He wrote many of Rhee’s speeches and had greater access to Rhee than perhaps any other person (Cumings 1990: 230). Oliver authored a biography of Syngman Rhee (1954) and a number of books on Korea, such as Korea: Forgotten Nation (1944), Why War Came in Korea (1950), and Verdict in Korea (1952). A retrospective account of the relationship between the Rhees and Oliver, citing their correspondence, can be found in Oliver (1978), including a summary of their activities in Washington between 1942 and early 1946 (1978: 1–23).

[15] These diaries from 1904–1934 are written in English and have been published by the National Museum of Korean Contemporary History (Lew et al. 2015).

[16] Perhaps Lew does not “count” Rhee’s first wife in this regard because (as was the norm amongst his social class in this period) this was an arranged marriage, in Rhee’s teens, to a girl he had barely met – i.e., presumably not a love-match.

[17] The author was not able to verify whether and to what degree Donner-Rhee acquired Korean language skills over the subsequent decades. Her letters, diaries and memos (fig. 11) indicate that she used English as her main language. 

[18] “Kyŏngmudae 12-nyŏn (1) Yi paksa wa P’ŭranch’esŭk’a yŏsa 景武臺 12 年 (1) 李博士와 프란체스카女史,” Kyŏnghyang sinmun, 21 July 1965.

[19] This file is not part of her naturalization records but is mentioned by Robert Oliver (1944, quoted in Lew 2014: 198–199) and in the “Application for Certification of (1) a Certificate of Citizenship or (2) a Naturalization Record,” 27 April 1940, Alien Case File for Francesca Rhee.

[20] The process of naturalization is described at URL #4.

[21] “Petition for Naturalization,” 26 January 1935, Alien Case File for Francesca Rhee.

[22] “Application for Certification of (1) a Certificate of Citizenship or (2) a Naturalization Record,” 27 April 1940, Alien Case File for Francesca Rhee.

[23] “Certificate of Naturalization,” 3 December 1940, Alien Case File for Francesca Rhee.

[24] As Im (2005: 315–317) argues, the fact that Donner-Rhee was not ethnically Korean was an obstacle to painting Rhee as the “father of the nation.”

[25] For the history of the Koreans in Hawaii, cf. Chang and Patterson (2003). For early Korean immigrants to America and their role in the establishment of the ROK, cf. Choi (2002).

[26] “Certificate of Naturalization,” 3 December 1940, Alien Case Files for Francesca Rhee.

[27] This was proving futile after liberation: the non-recognition of an indigenous Korean provisional government was to become a contentious issue during the US occupation of

South Korea and might partly be responsible for Korea’s eventual separation into two states.

[28] In fact, the Japanese had already sent their declaration of surrender to the Allies on 10 August, received an Allied response on 12 August, and finally accepted these terms on 14 August. The speech broadcast on 15 August was drafted and recorded the evening before, and the news of the Japanese surrender only began to circulate widely on the Korean peninsula on 16 August. Formally, the surrender took place on 2 September 1945. Nonetheless, in Japanese and Korean historical memory, 15 August came to symbolize the day on which the war ended and the Korean peninsula was liberated.

[29] Her correspondence from this period is included in KPW (1996), vol. 28. The National Institute of Korean History has compiled and published letters sent and received by Syngman Rhee and Francesca Donner-Rhee during the period 1944–65 (KPW 1996).

Hereafter this source collection is cited as Rhee Correspondence.

[30] Syngman Rhee to Robert T. Oliver, letter, 23 February 1946, Rhee Correspondence.

[31] Encyclopedia of Korean Culture, s.v. “Ton’amchang.” Today this is a Registered Cultural Property of Korea.

[32] Francesca Rhee to Robert T. Oliver, letter, 10 September 1947, Rhee Correspondence.

[33] Francesca Rhee to Mrs. Oliver, letter, 10 September 1947, Rhee Correspondence.

[34] Francesca Rhee to Robert T. Oliver, letter, 9 November 1947, Rhee Correspondence. ³⁷  Francesca Rhee to Robert T. Oliver, letter, 31 July 1947, Rhee Correspondence.

[35] After Donner-Rhee’s death, the Ihwajang (sometimes also transcribed Ehwajang) served as a museum, depicting Syngman Rhee’s lifestyle and showing how Korean traditional homes changed during the Japanese occupation period. Cf. URL #5 for a newsreel from March 1988 that includes footage of the Ihwajang, as well as briefly of Donner-Rhee; and URL #6 for a video clip of the exhibition in 2011. 

[36] Francesca Rhee to Robert T. Oliver, letter, 9 November 1947, Rhee Correspondence.

[37] Francesca Rhee to Robert T. Oliver, letter, 12 January 1946, Rhee Correspondence. In the same letter, Donner-Rhee compares the situation to Austria, where “even though the Austrian Government is recognized, the Allied Control Commission is still sitting there and will remain there until --?” She insists that “the Austrian independence was never timed as the Korean independence was.” Here, Donner-Rhee refers to the fact that an Austrian government was formally recognized by the Allied powers — France, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States — promptly after the war ended, providing Austria with a crucial “lead in statehood,” whereas this was not the case in Korea, which experienced de facto direct rule by the US military government under General John Hodge. At the same time, Donner-Rhee indirectly accuses the Russians of prolonging the Allied occupation of Austria, which legally continued until 1955. Although her accusation is partly true, it is generally considered by historians that blame lies with all four of the occupying powers (the former Allies) and cannot be understood without the broader context of the Cold War (e.g.

[38] The issue of trusteeship also played a role in To Yu-ho’s political activities after 1945. As a politician of the left-wing, To supported trusteeship. Cf. Lee Chang-hyun’s (2018: 26–28) and Hong Sŏn-p’yo’s (2018: 67–70) chapters in the second volume of Koreans and Central Europeans.

[39] Francesca Rhee to Mrs. Frye, letter, 4 May 1947, Rhee Correspondence.

[40] Rhee argued for a separate southern election as early as June 1946 in a speech at Chŏngŭp (Lew 2014: 273). The symbolic meaning of this speech and the subsequent course of events are still heavily disputed by scholars.

[41] Francesca Rhee to Mrs. Frye, letter, 4 May 1947, Rhee Correspondence. 

[42] Francesca Rhee to Robert T. Oliver, letter, 25 November 1947, Rhee Correspondence.

[43] Francesca Rhee, memo, 17 June 1948, Rhee Correspondence.

[44] The title of these memoirs is, after all, Yi Sŭng-man taet’ongnyŏng ŭi kŏn’gang [The health of President Syngman Rhee] and her motivation to write the book was her daughter-in-law’s request to divulge the “secrets for a long life,” since both Francesca and Syngman Rhee lived to be over ninety years old (Donner-Rhee 2007: 18).

[45] Cf. Oliver (1978: 24–45) on his stay in summer 1946, and the Rhee Correspondence.

[46] Similarly, a photo of Chiang, Francesca, and Syngman Rhee was featured in Chayu sinmun, 10 August 1948. 

[47] Cf. also URL #7–9 for official newsreels in which Donner-Rhee is filmed wearing hanbok.

[48] Francesca Rhee to Mrs. Oliver, letter, 9 November 1947, Rhee Correspondence.

[49] This organization was established with the aim of raising the Korean people’s hygiene and sanitation standards. Cf. “Sŏul pokŏn puinhoe rŭl kyŏlsŏng” 서울保健婦人會를結成, Kyŏnghyang sinmun, 28 May 1947.

[50] “Kyŏngmudae 12-nyŏn (1) Yi paksa wa P’ŭranch’esŭk’a yŏsa” 景武臺 12 年 (1) 李博士와 프란체스카女史, Kyŏnghyang sinmun, 21 July 1965.

[51] The Rhee Correspondence contains Donner-Rhee’s typewritten war diary only for the period 12 December 1950 – 10 May 1951 (KPW 1996, vol. 29: [entries] 225–229).

[52] According to Yang Tong-suk (2010), the Korean Women’s Organization was less a feminist organization for improving women’s rights than a pro-Rhee organization. Maintaining the structure of similar organizations in wartime Japan, it was used for anti-Communist indoctrination and mass-mobilization for pro-Rhee events.

[53] Park Maria (1906–1960) was married to Yi Ki-pong, a close aide of Rhee. She was DonnerRhee’s closest friend in Korea. Park had studied at Vanderbilt University in the US, earning an MA in education in 1934.

[54] “Han’guk ŭl chibae han tu yŏin: P’uranch’esŭk’a wa Pak Maria” 韓國을 支配한두女人「프란체스카」와 朴마리아, Kyŏnghyang sinmun, 19 May 1960.

[55] “P’ŭranch’esŭk’a yŏsa ŭi kanŭn kil” 「프란체스카」女史의가는길, Kyŏnghyang sinmun, 29 July 1965.

[56] Chang, a former Korean independence activist in China, was later elected, in 1950, to the national assembly, as an independent. From May to September 1952 he served as the third prime minister of the ROK. He was also appointed as the South Korean delegate to the sixth and seventh general assemblies of the UN, in 1950 and 1951. In his later years, Chang published a memoir entitled Taehan min’guk kŏn’guk kwa na [The foundation of the ROK and me] (Chang 1969).

[57] “Kyŏngmudae 12-nyŏn (1) Yi paksa wa P’ŭranch’esŭk’a yŏsa” 景武臺 12 年 (1) 李博士와 프란체스카女史, Kyŏnghyang sinmun, 21 July 1965.

[58] Ibid.

[59] Ibid.

[60] “Yŏjŏk” 餘滴, Kyŏnghyang sinmun, 28 September 1965.

[61] Ibid.

[62] Ibid. Furthermore, Donner-Rhee acknowledges this herself in her memoirs, cf. chapters 6– 11.

[63] “P’ŭranch’esŭk’a yŏsa ŭi kanŭn kil” 「프란체스카」女史의가는길, Kyŏnghyang sinmun, 29 July 1965.

[64] “‘Taet’ongnyŏng naejo Yuk Yŏng-su yŏsa ŭddŭm’ Tangukdae Yi Yŏng-ae ssi yŏktae taet’ongnyŏng puin yuhyŏng punsŏk” ‘대통령 내조 육영수여사 으뜸’ 단국대 이영애씨 역대 대통령부인 유형 분석, Kyŏnghyang sinmun, 29 April 1996.

[65] “Kyŏngmudae 12-nyŏn (1) Yi paksa wa P’ŭranch’esŭk’a yŏsa” 景武臺 12 年 (1) 李博士와 프란체스카女史, Kyŏnghyang sinmun, 21 July 1965.

[66] It was not uncommon in Korea for wealthy families without male offspring to adopt a son, not necessarily an orphan. Crucial was rather that he was from the same clan so that a continuation of lineage could be maintained, and ancestor rituals be properly conducted.

[67] These claims can be verified in articles and statements released at the time, quoted by political historian Kimura Kan (2003: 214–216), among others. According to Kimura, the Rhees were met with sympathy by many Seoul residents, as the Liberal Party and Lee Kipong had become, in the public eye, the “system” brought down by Rhee and the revolution. Rhee continued to be regarded by many as the founding father and symbol of the ROK, despite his record.

[68] “391. Editorial Note,” Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958–1960 (Japan, Korea), vol. XVII. ⁷⁶  Ibid.

[69] “P’ŭranch’esŭk’a yŏsa ŭi kanŭn kil” 「프란체스카」女史의가는길, Kyŏnghyang sinmun, 29 July 1965.

[70] Yi In-su belongs to the Chŏnju Yi clan, the same lineage as Rhee. See an interview with Yi In-su from 2008 on the YouTube channel of the Yŏnhap news agency (URL #10). Yi In-su also appears in an interview from 2015 with Cho Hye-ja, who translated Donner-Rhee’s memoirs and war diary into Korean (URL #11).

[71] To the best of the author’s knowledge, this claim cannot be confirmed by published US documents in the Foreign Relations of the United States series (FRUS).

[72] “Ilbon kija ka pon Yi Sŭng-man puch’ŏ (sang)” 日本記者가 본 李承晚夫妻(上), Kyŏnghyang sinmun, 20 December 1960.

[73] “P’ŭ yŏsa choldo ipwŏn” 프女史졸도入院, Kyŏnghyang sinmun, 23 July 1965. 

[74] “P’ŭranch’esŭk’a yŏsa ŭi kanŭn kil” 「프란체스카」女史의가는길, Kyŏnghyang sinmun, 29

July 1965. By “legal matter,” the editorialist implies that the purpose of the adoption was not to take over the responsibility of caring for a child, nor to develop a parental-filial bond of mutual love, but simply to have a family heir who will carry out the ancestor rituals after the parents’ death, which were traditionally considered of utmost importance.

[75] “‘P’ŭ’ yŏsa 30-yŏn man ŭi kŭnch’in, 11-il ‘Pwienna’ ro”『프』女史 30 年만의覲親 11 日『뷔엔나』로, Tonga ilbo, 11 September 1965.

[76] “Syngman Rhee’s Witwe kehrt morgen in ihre Heimatstadt Wien zurück,” Kronen Zeitung (Wien [Vienna edition]), 15 September 1965.

[77] “Heimkehr aus einem abenteuerlichen Leben” [Return from an adventurous life], Kronen Zeitung (Wien), 26 September 1965.

[78] Despite the fact that Austria was officially neutral in the Cold War order. “Chigŭm ŭn ŏdi e: Kyŏnghyang i podo han k’ŭn nyusŭ ŭi chuin’gong tŭl” 지금은 어디에 京郷이報道한 큰뉴스의 主人公들, Kyŏnghyang sinmun, 25 October 1968. In the article, Austria (osŭt’ŭria) is spelled as “osŭt’ŭriŏ.”

[79] “Heimkehr aus einem abenteuerlichen Leben” [Return from an adventurous life], Kronen

Zeitung (Wien), 26 September 1965. “‘Pimil kigwanwŏn i noryŏyo’: P’ŭranch’esŭk’a yŏsa, ‘Pin’ sŏ mangbal” ‘秘密機關員이 노려요’ 프란체스카女史,「빈」서 妄發, Kyŏnghyang sinmun,

27 September 1965.

[80] “Han’guk ch’ŏpja wihyŏpsŏl P’ŭ yŏsa chok’a puin” 韓國諜者威脅說 프女史조카否認, Kyŏnghyang sinmun, 28 September 1965.

[81] “Gejagte Präsidentenwitwe Rhee zog in ein neues Wiener ‘Versteck’” [Hunted president’s widow Rhee moved into a new Viennese hideout], Kronen Zeitung, 28 September 1965; “‘Pin’ kyowoe ro omgyŏ P’ŭranch’esuk’a yŏsa” 「빈」郊外로옮겨 프란체스카女史,

Kyŏnghyang sinmun, 29 September 1965.

[82] “Mangbu ch’ajaon ‘P’ŭ’ yŏsa” 亡夫찾아온「프」女史, Kyŏnghyang sinmun, 18 July 1967.

[83] Ibid.

[84] “‘Tŏ opsi woeropkiman…’” ‘더없이 외롭기만…’, Kyŏnghyang sinmun, 19 July 1969.

[85] “Hollan mandŏhan ‘P’ŭ’ yŏsa kyŏngho kyŏngch’al” 混亂만더한「프」女史警護경찰,

Kyŏnghyang sinmun, 21 March 1966. ⁹⁶  “P’ŭ yŏsa ŭi myŏndam yoch’ŏng ch’ŏngwadae sŏ kŏbu” 프女史의 面談要請 青瓦臺서拒否, Kyŏngyang sinmun, 22 March 1966.

[86] “Pak daet’ongnyŏng, ‘Pŭ’ yŏsa e cheŭi ‘yŏsaeng ŭl han’guk sŏ ponaedorok’” 朴大統領,『프』女史에提議 “餘生을韓國서보내도록”, Tonga ilbo, 25 March 1966.

[87] “P’ŭ yŏsa wi han tagwahoe, chŏn chayudanggye chungjindŭl” 프女史위한茶菓會 前自由黨系重鎭들, Kyŏngyang sinmun, 29 March 1966.

[88] “Ch’ehan tong’an sŏngmu rŭl ilgwa ro” 滯韓동안 省募를日課로, Tonga ilbo, 22 March 1966.

[89] Ibid.

[90] “Mangbu ŭi myŏngbok ŭl pilmyŏ tasi ttŏnanŭn P’ŭ yŏsa” 亡夫의 冥福을 빌며 다시떠나는 프

[91] “Mangbu ch’ajaon ‘P’ŭ’ yŏsa” 亡夫찾아온「프」女史, Kyŏnghyang sinmun, 18 July 1967.

[92] Cho later translated Donner-Rhee’s memoirs and war diary into Korean. In 2006, she visited Vienna and wrote about this trip in the right-wing Korean monthly Han’guk nondan (her essay is reprinted in Donner-Rhee 2007: 157–162).

[93] “Yusan ŭn ‘P’ŭ’ yŏsa e” 遺產은『프』女史에, Tonga ilbo, 2 August 1965.

[94] “Yŏjŏk” 餘滴, Kyŏnghyang sinmun, 28 September 1965.

[95] “Yi paksa pon-puin kwa yangja ŭi hojŏk chŏlch’a opsi malso” 李博士本夫人과養子의戸籍 節次없이抹消, 9 August 1965; “Wimun ŭi Yi paksa hojŏk, pon’in man ppaenae chŏnjŏk P’ŭ yŏsa nŭn 50-yŏn e ipchŏk” 疑問의李博士戶籍 本人만빼내 轉籍 프女史는 50 年에 入籍,

Kyŏnghyang sinmun, 9 August 1965.

[96] “Na ŭi chŏn-chaesan ŭn P’ŭranch’esŭk’a Ri e” 나의 全財產은 프란체스카리에, Tonga ilbo, 3 August 1967. 

[97] “Mangbu ch’ajaon ‘P’ŭ’ yŏsa” 亡夫찾아온「프」女史, Kyŏnghyang sinmun, 18 July 1967.

[98] “Chŏnjik kukka wŏnsu e sebi 70% rŭl chigŭp” 前職國家元首에 歲費 70%를支給, Kyŏnghyang sinmun, 10 June 1966.

[99] “Chŏnjik taet’ongnyŏng e kwan han pŏmnyul” 전직대통령예우에관한법률, bill no. 2086, 22 January 1969, The National Assembly Information System.

[100] “P’ŭranch’esŭk’a yŏsa 7-wŏl e naehan. Yi paksa 4-chugi maja, yŏngju hal tŭt” 프란체스카 女史 7 月에來韓 李博士 4 周忌맞아,永住할듯, Kyŏnghyang sinmun, 27 March 1969.

[101] “‘Tŏ opsi woeropkiman …’” ‘더없이 외롭기만_…’, Kyŏnghyang sinmun, 19 July 1969.

[102] “P’ŭranch’esŭk’a yŏsa kwiguk” 프란체스카女史귀국, Maeil kyŏngje, 25 March 1970.

[103] “P’ŭranch’esŭk’a yŏsa, yŏng’ju wi hae kwiguk” 프란체스카女史,永住위해歸國, Tonga ilbo, 16 May 1970. Cf. also “Han’guk e yŏng’ju harŏ on P’ŭranch’esŭk’a yŏsa, ŏttokke taehaeya halkka” 한국에 永住하러온 프란체스카女史 어떻게대해야할까, Kyŏngyang sinmun, 19 March

1970.

[104] “P’ŭranch’esŭk’a yŏsa kungnip myoji anjang” 프란체스카여사 국립묘지安葬, Tonga ilbo, 23 March 1992.

[105] “‘Ehwajang,’ Home of Korea’s First President,” The Korea Herald Online, 13 May 2010.

[106] “P’ŭranch’esŭk’a yŏsa yup’umchŏn” 프란체스카여사遺品展, Maeil kyŏngje, 26 March 1993; Cf. also URL #12 for a newsreel of the exhibition.

[107] An essay in the exhibition brochure for example highlights this character trait (Ihwajang 1993: [14]).

[108] “P’ŭranch’esŭk’a yŏsa saengae chomyŏng KBS1 ‘tak’yugŭkjang’” 프란체스카여사 생애조명 KBS1「다큐극장」, Tonga ilbo, 23 April 1994.

[109] “‘P’ŭranch’esŭk’a Ri’ CTN ohu 11:00” 「프란체스카리」CTN 오후 11:00, Kyŏnghyang sinmun, 20 March 1999.

[110] “Suhae ro hoeson toen Ihwajang Yi Sŭng-man taet’ongnyŏng kirongmul ŭnggŭp ch’ŏch’i,” New Daily, 2 August 2011.

[111] For example “Von der First Lady bis zum UNO-Generalsekretär,” Die Presse, 4 January

2012; “Im Donaupark geht Franziska Donners Traum in Erfüllung,” Die Presse, 23 June 2015.