Repair of ex-president Rhee’s villa put on halt on Jeju Island

By Kim Rahn

The Jeju government’s plan to repair a villa of former President Sygnman Rhee on the resort island has been halted after the province’s oversight council cut the budget for the project.

While the local government wants the old cottage to be immediately repaired, the council opposes it, saying the Rhee administration was responsible for the deaths of thousands of Jeju residents.

The Jeju Special Self-Governing Provincial Government planned to repair the villa, named “gwibinsa” (VIP house), at a total cost of 246 million won ($212,700) — half from the local authority and the rest from the central government.

The house, Registered Cultural Property No. 113, was built in Gujwa, Jeju City, on some 234 square meters of land in 1957 when Rhee established a ranch there. The land currently belongs to a private company.

Early last year, the building received the lowest grade for structural safety, requiring urgent repair.

But the provincial council put the brakes on, citing the inappropriateness of preserving a vestige of the Rhee administration.

Under Rhee, Jeju people were persecuted and up to 30,000 were killed in a de-facto civil war that started on April 3 1948 — the Jeju Uprising.

“To Jeju people, the memory of Rhee is not good. Some council members said Rhee is the person who caused huge suffering to Jeju residents, saying it is not reasonable to spend the province’s money on repairing his cottage,” Kim Gu-ok, an official said.

Claiming bereaved families of the massacre victims will not accept spending money on the house, the council didn’t allocate any of its budget for the project during a regular meeting late last year.

The local government originally considered not only repairing the villa but also establishing a separate memorial hall there costing 2 billion won. Facing opposition from victims’ bereaved families, however, it decided to do repair work and set up firefighting and drainage facilities at a cost of 690 million won.

But getting that money was not easy, so it decided to do only repair work costing 246 million won.

“If the local council refuses to contribute to the budget, the central government won’t pay the rest,” Kim said.

The local government plans to mount a campaign to persuade the families of those killed in the uprising to allow the repairs, telling them the importance of the villa in architectural history.

Regarding this, Yang Dong-yun, head of a Jeju residents’ association, said early last year, “Rhee is responsible for the uprising. But the cottage is part of history. For a proper understanding on Rhee’s responsibility and the uprising, it may be reasonable to make minimum repairs on the villa and use it for dark tourism. But embellishing it or building a memorial hall would be a distortion of history.”

Kim said, “Considering such remarks, we believe the families and organizations won’t object to simple repairs. We’ll urge the council to allocate the money in a supplementary budget.”

In the one-story villa are four rooms, a living room, a kitchen, a fireplace, a bathroom, and a table and a dresser owned by Rhee’s wife Francesca. It is said an American architect designed it and the construction materials came from Germany.