795.00/7–1153
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs (Robertson)1
Subject:
- Meeting with President Rhee on July 11, 1953.
Participants:
- President Syngman Rhee
- Walter S. Robertson, Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs
- Ellis O. Briggs, American Ambassador to Korea
- Paik Tu-chin, Prime Minister of Korea
- Pyon Yongtae, Foreign Minister of Korea
- Kenneth T. Young, Director of Office of Northeast Asian Affairs
Ambassador Briggs, Mr. Young, and I met with President Rhee and his two Ministers at 12:15 today.
I stated that President Rhee and I had reached such a wide area of agreement that it now seemed to me that it would be best for me to return to Washington and make a personal report to President Eisenhower and Secretary Dulles. President Rhee said that he thought that was a “good idea” and suggested that I should also see the Senate leaders to clarify some of the matters on which we had not reached final understandings.
[Page 1374]I then suggested that it would be desirable, if he agreed, for us to issue a joint public statement recording our mutual understandings.2 It seemed to me it would be better to have one statement rather than two different statements that might lead to misinterpretations in the press. President Rhee immediately agreed that it was “most important” to issue a single joint statement. He said he recognized my difficulty in explaining the U.S. position to the American people and he hoped I recognized his difficulty in not saying too much or too little to the Korean people. He felt that what we both said should jibe completely. He agreed that what was said in Seoul and Washington should be uniform. He told me that he had the same idea in mind this morning and had already jotted down some notes for such a statement.
I then gave him and his Ministers a copy of our suggested draft statement. After reading it President Rhee said that he would study it together with his own ideas so that we could agree on a joint statement today.
I then handed President Rhee a copy of my letter to him.3 He read it aloud, but made no comment on it other than to thank me for it.
He asked me when I intended to depart. I told him tomorrow, at which he shook his head. In an entirely personal manner he turned to me and said that he very much appreciated my coming to Korea and working so hard and patiently to reach the understanding which he, too, wanted as much as I. He then told me: “Mr. Robertson, you have come to Korea and it is you who have conquered. I am left in a ditch. Please pull me out. Go back to Washington and tell the President, the Secretary of State, and the Senate leaders about all these things we have discussed. Tell them I want to work with the United States.”
The meeting ended in an atmosphere of complete personal cordiality on President Rhee’s part towards us. When I asked him what to tell the correspondents waiting down the hill, President Rhee suggested saying that they would “soon see a joint statement from us, perhaps this afternoon”.
Note: Embtel 39 from Embassy Seoul of July 114 contains a brief summary of this meeting.
- This memorandum was drafted by Young.↩
- For a text of the joint statement, see Department of State Bulletin, July 20, 1953, pp. 72–73.↩
- Not printed; a text of this letter, which was essentially a courtesy reply, was transmitted in Army message 100910Z from Seoul as modified by telegram 36 to Seoul, both July 10, 1953. (795.00/7–953)↩
- Not printed. (795.00/7–1153)↩