795.00/6–1453
The President of the Republic of Korea (Rhee) to the Secretary of State1
My Dear Mr. Secretary: I wish to thank you most sincerely for your warm and encouraging letter of June 12. I wish I could accept your kind invitation to come to the US but the situation here is such that I can not leave the country even for a short while.
I wonder if you could make a trip here so that we may talk things over face to face. Your tour to this part of the orient may be considered timely. Our direct discussion on the present critical problems may be helpful. I hope you could manage time.
Mrs. Rhee joins me in wishing you and Mrs. Dulles best of health and all success.
Cordially,
- This personal message was transmitted to Dulles in telegram 1 from Seoul, which was repeated to Tokyo eyes only for Murphy and Clark, June 14, 1953, 4 p.m. Also part of the telegram was a covering letter from Rhee stating “I desire to show our appreciation for the Secretary’s kind invitation so that we can have [an] opportunity to discuss problems face to face.”↩