He pulled this type of shit: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeju_uprising.
We’re splitting hairs here but he was a US puppet that happily killed his opposition.
Comment on The lamest countries
MindSkipperBro12@lemmy.world 9 months agoI don’t think South Korea was a fascist state…
But it certainly was a ruled by a nationalist right wing dictator.
My only source is slight knowledge on the Korean War and this: www.quora.com/Was-Syngman-Rhee-a-fascist
seeking_perhaps@mander.xyz 9 months ago
MindSkipperBro12@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Oh absolutely, that’s without a doubt at all. I’m just doubting the “fascist” part.
andros_rex@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Autocratic and repressive. Syngman Rhee wasn’t really an “organic” leader either - essentially picked by the US because he spoke decent English. Imprisoned commies, eventually forced to resign (read: evacuated by the US government) after college kid protestors were murdered by police. South Korea was under autocratic military regimes for most of the second half of the 20th century.
Syngman Rhee’s political philosophy also had an ethnostate aspect to it - a sense of Korean superiority.
I’m not an expert in Korean history, but an autocratic, militaristic government which cracks down hard on communism and believes in a “master race” is getting into “if it quacks like a duck” territory. There are as many definitions of fascism as there are scholars of fascism, but I think it fits a traditional Eco/Griffin mold.