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The Spirit of Independence was one of the books that I had been meaning to read in its entirety but for which I never had time. In the early spring of 1997, Professor Young Ick Lew, director of the Institute for Modern Korean Studies, Yonsei University, Seoul, asked me to translate it into English and provided me a xerox copy of the first edition of the book that had been kept in Ihwajang, the private residence of Syngman Rhee in Seoul. I thank Professor Lew for urging me to read this remarkable work by the young Rhee and for providing me a grant so that I could devote more than a year of my time to translating it. Professor Lew, an accomplished scholar in modern Korean history who has spent several years combing through and cataloging a huge number of written materials and other artifacts that had been painstakingly preserved by Rhee and his son, Dr. Insoo Rhee, inspired and encouraged me to undertake and complete the project. The turn-of-the-century Korean idioms, syntax, and vocabulary used in The Spirit of Independence were not easy for me because of an old system of “spelling,” the absence of proper punctuation and paragraphing, and the use of old expressions and terms that are largely extinct today. Rhee’s habit of stringing several long sentences together, or switching the subject of a sentence without explicit indication of the change, was another reason why it took considerably more time than I had anticipated. I had the good fortune of having Professors Lew and Key Hyuk Kim as unpaid consultants; they helped identify or clarify many proper nouns and unclear passages that I presented to them after completion of the first draft of the manuscript. I appreciate their goodwill as well as their scholarship. I owe thanks to the two anonymous readers who read my ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xvii manuscript at the request of the University of Hawai‘i Press and gave me the benefit of their helpful criticism and corrections. I feel very fortunate that Patricia Crosby, executive editor of the University of Hawai‘i Press, has taken charge of this project because she has been most helpful and efficient. I gratefully acknowledge also my indebtedness to my daughter, Dorothy, who read the entire manuscript and painstakingly corrected and edited it, as she had done on many other occasions over the years. I alone am responsible, of course, for any errors or shortcomings that remain in the final product. Whenever I am involved in a writing project, my wife, On Ja, has been most supportive and helpful. This time she spent hours for many days helping me proofread the final version for submission to the press. I have not thanked her openly so far, but I would like to acknowledge her help at this time. xviii Acknowledgments ...

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