In December of the previous year, I wrote an article on the topic of 'Establishing a Memorial Hall for President Syngman Rhee' in the CEO column, and our LCC also happily donated KRW 50 million, and I came across the news that KRW 10 billion in funds had already been collected. “It will be a space of memory to record and publicize what the founding ideology and national identity of the Republic of Korea are, and what difficulties our people have overcome to grow into the free and prosperous democratic nation that it is today,” said the Memorial Hall Construction Promotion Committee. As announced, there is a feeling that the memorial hall construction project will proceed smoothly.

  Moreover, the 'National Foundation War' that I watched with my wife was a documentary genre that is difficult to attract in theaters, but it was predicted that it would easily exceed 1 million viewers in 4 weeks, and it was a great opportunity to feel the agony and true face of the founding president, which was a great help in promoting the construction of the museum. I think it will act as a catalyst. While the movie was playing, I heard a sigh in the dark, wiped my eyes with a handkerchief, and I couldn't hide my heart pounding and my eyes getting hot. On a review site , “I’m ashamed of myself for not knowing Syngman Rhee”, “I confess that I misunderstood Syngman Rhee for a long time and that my thoughts were biased.” There are a series of articles.

  Two things that have recently become a hot topic are the first is the news of the ruling and opposition parties talking about the nomination of National Assembly members that is happening behind the scenes in the political world, and the second is the ‘Issue of re-evaluation of President Syngman Rhee' brought about by the documentary film 'National Foundation War.' If the former is an important issue that determines the future of Korean politics, the latter can be considered as important as the former because it penetrates the present and leads to the future from a perspective that looks at the past of Korean politics. This film was produced from a positive perspective, unlike the existing biased and critical perspective, and seems to be highly regarded for collecting and reflecting new materials and records from home and abroad. For example, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in Washington, D.C., found a video of President Syngman Rhee's New York parade. Kim Deok-young said, "When I found and checked the original video, I cried, my producer cried, and the American citizen who was helping me cried." The director is conveying this.

  “I thought it was a huge success even if only 50,000 people saw it, but it feels like a dream.” Kim Deok-young, director of 'National Foundation War' said in an interview, “It would be a great pleasure if my film contributed even a little to ending the malicious disparagement of President Rhee.” With a production cost of 300 million won and sales of 10 billion won, it is sure to be a huge hit, and professional filmmakers seem to believe that 1 million viewers for a documentary film can have greater meaning than 10 million viewers for a feature film. 'National Foundation War' is a work created by the passion of husband and wife filmmakers Director Kim and Producer Lim Soo-young, and is a 'homemade movie' made by hand at home.

  Several films including 「Kim Il-sung Children」 After experiencing a crushing failure in making a documentary film, they sold their car and the cafe they were running, leaving them penniless. It is said that his wife continued to scold him, saying, “You have nothing more to sell, so are you trying to increase your debt by making a Syngman Rhee movie?”

  In any case, the sensation of 'National Foundation War' cannot be seen as the result of the gathering of audiences with a specific political orientation. It seems to be an accurate assessment that the audience was moved by the catharsis provided by 'facts' and that the content also had differentiated competitiveness. Director Kim said, “We will release the second part of the founding war, which focuses on the human side of President Rhee, in March of next year,” and “We will seek a direction for the future of the Republic of Korea through the concerns of the first generation of founding people.”

  I was born during the founding era and experienced the Korean War indirectly, and as a child who lived during the Syngman Rhee era (1948-1960), I was confident that I understood to some extent the achievements of the founding president. However, while watching the movie, I witnessed scenes I had never known or imagined, and felt both surprise and ignorance about 'The Father of the Nation.' The president crying while visiting students injured during the April 19 incident, A letter to President Chiang Kai-shek praising the students for their actions, providing six years of compulsory education despite difficult circumstances, and the welcoming car parade in New York in 1954. Scenes, etc … In particular, we must rid ourselves of distortions and denigration, such as the fiction and distortion of the Hawaiian exile, the cause and main culprit of the March 15 election fraud, the truth about Syngman Rhee, who blew up the Han River Bridge and ran away, and the false accusation that he was the chief person responsible for sharing the burden between North and South Korea.

  The movie implied that the March 15 election fraud, which was the starting point of the April 19 Revolution, was due to the sudden death (heart attack) of opposition candidate Dr. Cho Byeong-ok, and that Syngman Rhee, who was the sole candidate, had no reason to rig the election. I cannot agree with the argument that this was done to elect Lee Ki-poong, who was inferior to the opposition vice presidential candidate Dr. Jang Myeon, and that it had nothing to do with Syngman Rhee, but the 85-year-old president was responsible for hundreds of deaths . Since he could never escape the responsibility of the March 15 election fraud that left thousands of people injured, he made the courageous decision to do it himself after April 19. The movie showed that the claim that Dr. Syngman Rhee's Jeongeup Remarks in 1946 and the establishment of South Korea's independent government in 1948 were 'The culprit of the division of South and North Korea' was also objectively unconvincing. After liberation in 1945, the Soviet Union, which was stationed in North Korea, was informed by Stalin of the 'policy to first establish a bourgeois democratic regime and then communistize the entire Korean Peninsula,' and in 1946, the 'North Korea Provisional People’s Committee' was launched, effectively establishing North Korea’s sole pro-Soviet regime. This has been established.

  In the movie, there are various false facts about President Syngman Rhee. It was directly countering it with facts .

  First, after the Korean War broke out and the Han River footbridge was blown up, he was the first to flee and was stigmatized as a 'Russian Man' because countless civilians died. At the time, the police blocked access and blew it up , and civilians can be seen in the video crossing under the bridge. There was. In addition, the history that Syngman Rhee fled to Hawaii and went into exile when the April 19 Revolution broke out, and that he hid millions of dollars in a Swiss account and lived a luxurious life was also severely distorted. After April 19, the 85-year-old Syngman Rhee went to Hawaii, where he had lived for 30 years as a young man, to take a break, but the video showed that it was by no means a flight or exile. The elderly couple left everything behind at Ewhajang and boarded the plane with only four small shooting cases for a simple trip . Their return home was thwarted by the government's refusal of the May 16 Revolution, and they were laid to rest in Hawaii in 1965. President Syngman Rhee and his wife, who did not run away and lived without a penny, receiving help from those around them, and Philippine dictator Marcos. The videos comparing Imelda's glamorous life in exile in Hawaii were shocking. 'It is a malicious and incorrect claim that he was the main culprit in the division of North and South Korea because he was the only South Korean political leader to properly see the goals of the Soviet occupation policy and the reality of the North Korean regime, and established a separate South Korean government in 1948 to prevent South Korea from becoming communist.' It was shown in the 'National Foundation War.'

  Since the establishment of the Republic of Korea government on August 15, 1948, we have created a proud history that has amazed the world for 75 years, and among the numerous independent countries after World Wars I and II, only Taiwan , Israel, and Korea have joined the ranks of advanced countries. Although China , India , and Russia have larger populations and larger territories than us, their national power is stronger, but they are not called advanced countries. In addition to the election system, we enjoy freedom of speech , publishing , assembly , and religion to our heart's content, and are building a monument to prosperity for the first time in 5,000 years of national history, focusing on K-pop and K- beauty , which have global competitiveness that Korea is proud of. Like other presidents, there are political mistakes, but I think it is difficult to explain the K-model toward the world without remembering the positive continuity of the two presidents, Syngman Rhee and Chung-hee Park. The two former presidents, Syngman Rhee (1948-1960) and Park Chung-hee (1963-1979), continued the development of ROK-US relations based on consistent anti-communist ideology and the ROK-US alliance, established an anti-colonial model that aligned with the global capitalist camp, and showed simple and hard-working humanity. We can also discover the identity of the owner of Syngman Rhee government sowed the seeds of national development , and the Park Chung-hee government completed them. It could also be explained that the former laid the railroad and the latter ran the locomotive. Industrialization and democratization were promoted based on the national security established during the two presidents, and it seems appropriate to say that he was a 'revolutionary' who lived in an era of war and fought conservative vested interests, and was a 'progressive right-winger' who pursued change.

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Mr. Baik