List of ambassadors of Russia to South Korea
This is a List of Ambassadors from Russia to South Korea. The Russian Empire established relations with the Joseon Dynasty in 1884. However Korea was deprived of its right to conduct independent foreign policy by the Japan-Korea Treaty of 1905, while the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (the eventual successor to the Russian Empire) did not formally recognise Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea in exile. In 1948, three years after the end of Japanese rule in Korea, the USSR recognised only one government on the Korean peninsula—the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, commonly North Korea. In September 1990, towards the end of its existence, the USSR established relations with the Republic of Korea (commonly known as South Korea).
Syngman Rhee
On July 20, 1948, Rhee was elected president of the Republic of Korea in the South Korean presidential election, 1948 with 92.3% of the vote; the second candidate, Kim Gu, received 6.7% of the vote. On August 15, the Republic of Korea was formally established in South Korea and Rhee was inaugurated as the first President of the Republic of Korea. The next month, on September 9, the north also proclaimed statehood as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Rhee himself had been an independence activist, and his relations with the "chinilpa" Korean elites who had collaborated with the Japanese were, in the words of the South Korean historian Kyung Moon Hwang, often "contentious," but in the end an understanding was reached in which, in exchange for their support, Rhee would not purge the elites. In particular, the Koreans who had served in the colonial-era National Police, whom the Americans had retained after August 1945, were promised by Rhee that their jobs would not be threatened by him. Upon independence in 1948, 53% of South Korean police officers were men who had served in the National Police during the Japanese occupation.