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First President Syngman Rhee is sworn in on July 24, 1948.
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To commemorate the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Republic of Korea this year, the Chosun Ilbo will start a series of stories based on photographs featuring the 60 biggest events of the past 60 years.
Those six decades have seen light and darkness, joy and sadness, and glory and humiliation. But those years have been a proud history during which we have achieved democracy and economic development based on the foundation of a free and democratic constitution, despite numerous challenges.
The Chosun Ilbo is going to shed light on the 60 biggest events of that time using photographs that bear witness to how such events have made us what we are today.
"We marked the third anniversary of national liberation on Aug. 15. Although we had not seen the country reunified yet, we declared the founding of the republic's government to the world that day. With the wearisome rainy season over, the sky looked all the clearer. From early morning, each house hoisted the national flag. A big crowd filled the Capitol plaza and the streets that had been cleaned." This was the story in the Chosun Ilbo on Aug. 16, 1948 about the founding of the republic the previous day.
Aug. 15, 1948 means more than the establishment of a government for the first time since 1910, when the Korean people lost their sovereignty. It means that a people who had been under a colonial rule following thousands of years of dynastic rule, finally started a new history of parliamentary democracy based on universal suffrage and a multi-party system. It also means that Korea became a member of the world political community, breaking away from the Confucian political sphere in East Asia.
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A ceremony is held at the Capitol plaza on Aug. 15, 1948 to celebrate the establishment of the Republic of Korea and the third anniversary of liberation from Japanese colonial rule.
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After national liberation on Aug. 15, 1945, three years earlier, the Korean Peninsula was gripped by national division and the conflict between Left and Right. People fought each other over ideologies and ideas and were engaged in collaboration and dissent.
The U.S.-Soviet Joint Commission held two sessions to discuss trusteeship over Korea, but they ended in a rupture. In February 1946, North Korea organized the provisional people's committee, a de facto unilateral government. In April 1948, Kim Koo's attempt to realize inter-Korean talks came to naught.
Since it was impossible to establish a unified government, a second best policy would be to establish a free and democratic government south of the 38th parallel. In the first general election on May 10, 1948, 79.7 percent of the voters 21 years old and older registered, and 92.5 percent of the registered voters participated in the election.
Even leftwing scholars admit today that this general election represented popular suffrage that could embody free democracy. The Assembly formed based on the outcome approved the Constitution on July 17 that year. This first Constitution made it clear that sovereignty belongs to the people, and that the republic aspires to free democracy and free competition that guarantee individual people's freedom and economic rights.
On Aug. 15, 1948, the Republic of Korea declared its founding to the world. At a massive ceremony in the Capitol plaza at 11 a.m., first president Syngman Rhee proclaimed, "I will protect civil rights and the freedom of the individuals, and give priority to international trade and industrial development."
Twenty-five days later, on Sept. 9, the North Korean government was established. But through Resolution No. 195 adopted in December that year, the UN approved only the "Republic of Korea as a legitimate government established in an area where election monitoring was possible."
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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