Student group 'Inha Spirit' announces Saturday launch of restoration committee

Youth committee calls move an attempt to 'rehabilitate dictatorship after 40 years'

A view of Inha University [Inha University]
A view of Inha University [Inha University]

A push by some Inha University students to restore a statue of former President Rhee Syngman on campus has drawn sharp opposition from political circles and the student community, fueling a growing dispute.

A five-member student group called Inha Spirit plans to hold the inaugural ceremony of the "Inha University Rhee Syngman Statue Restoration Committee" in front of the campus lake Ingyeongho on Saturday morning, Yonhap reported Tuesday.

The group posted on SNS that "Rhee Syngman was the one who initiated the founding of Inha University — what university has no memorial to its founder?" and said it would "strongly push for the restoration of the Rhee Syngman statue."

The group added that it would raise funds voluntarily from alumni and citizens — not from the university budget — and restore the statue to its original location by next year.

News of the restoration effort prompted the youth committee of the Progressive Party's Incheon chapter to post opposition notices on campus. "Inha University stood with the April 19 Revolution, and in 1984 our sunbae tore down the Rhee Syngman statue with their own hands," the committee said, criticizing the move as an attempt to "erect dictatorship again after more than 40 years."

The youth committee also raised objections to a "Youth Leadership Workshop" featuring former Employment and Labor Minister Kim Moon-soo, co-organized by Inha Spirit on the same day. Pointing to a lecture titled "The Founding of the Republic of Korea and the Economic Miracle under Presidents Rhee Syngman and Park Chung-hee," the committee said, "What young people need is not leadership that glorifies dictatorship, but politics that changes inequality."

Inha University denied permission for the inaugural ceremony, citing concerns over on-campus conflict and safety, while conditionally approving the venue rental for the youth leadership workshop.

Rhee ordered then-Education Minister Kim Beop-rin in December 1952, while the government was displaced in Busan during the Korean War, to establish an engineering college in Incheon. Inha University was founded in 1954 as Inha Institute of Technology at its current campus in Yonghyeon-dong, Michuhol-gu, Incheon. A 6.3-meter statue of Rhee was erected in a garden near Ingyeongho in 1979, but was torn down by students in 1984 over his record of dictatorship and collaboration with Japanese colonial rule.


an@heraldcorp.com