Message to the Students of Korea.

To the students of the Republic of Korea:

Throughout my life I will cherish the memory of the warm and gracious welcome recently accorded me by the people of Korea. for this I wish to express my heartfelt gratitude. Your welcome afforded convincing proof, if it were necessary, of the friendly and strong bonds between our two peoples.

The world well knows the dedication of the youth and students of Korea to the cause of freedom. You have proven your courage and your willingness to defend man's most precious possession. You and your country are now embarked upon the intricate, more difficult task of ensuring that the liberties you have won will find lasting expression in the Republic of Korea.

Youth has the priceless assets of vigor and enthusiasm. Yet you must also bring to your tasks a sense of infinite patience, broad vision, and deep humility if you are to meet the challenge which faces Korea and the world. Courage alone will not suffice. You must demonstrate that sense of individual responsibility and self-restraint which will serve to guarantee both freedom and its inseparable twin, justice. free men face a difficult choice; whether they will dissipate their liberty through license; or whether they will take up the burdens which liberty imposes and go forward in the service of mankind. for freedom must be served as well as sought. It imposes duties and obligations, as well as bestowing rights and liberties. Your success in fulfilling these obligations will determine whether your generation will succeed in maintaining a balance between the extremes of license on the one hand and repression on the other.

There are those who would deny you your freedom to achieve their aims--indeed they want to dominate the world. They exploit both anarchy and servitude. They seek to convince you that the free world poses a threat to peace and progress. In this they persist despite clear evidence that they, not we, have brought a third of the world's people into brutal subjugation; that they, not we, foment anarchy in troubled lands; that they, not we, refuse to disarm and, instead, threaten to rain down instruments of destruction upon the weak and the powerful alike. There is, indeed, existing a threat to peace and progress, to your right of self-determination and your liberties; it is posed by the ruthless colonial aggressions which characterize international communism.

Your generation, in Korea and elsewhere, faces as none before it the issue as to whether mankind is to progress united in freedom and justice or whether nations will fall victim one by one to a new and deadly colonialism. Upon your response depend the future of your nation and, in considerable measure, the future of the free world. I have deep confidence that you are equal to the task before you, and I wish you full and complete success in this great responsibility.

Sincerely,

DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER