March 1960 South Korean presidential election

Popular hopes of unseating Rhee were frustrated by the death of his opponent Cho Pyong-ok several weeks before the election, leaving Rhee to be elected without opposition.[4]

The constitution stated, if there was only one candidate, they were required to receive at least 30% of the total votes cast in order to be elected, including blank and invalid votes. As the only candidate, Rhee received 88.7% of all votes cast. Dissent to the authoritarian president was more apparent in the urban areas than the rest of the country. In Seoul, nearly a third of the votes were invalid or blank, while in the vice presidential election held simultaneously, only 2.9% of the ballots were invalidated.[5]

With no competition for Rhee in the presidential elections of 1960 after the death of his opponent, the simultaneous vice-presidential elections became the main focus of attention. Opposition to Rhee was concentrated around the incumbent Democratic Party candidate, Chang Myon, who had been elected in 1956.[2] Official results after the election showed a large victory for the Liberal candidate, Lee Ki Poong, with a margin of almost 80% to Chang's 17.5%, entirely against popular expectations, and it was obvious that the results had been extensively manipulated: Han goes so far as to say that "the election results were completely fabricated by police headquarters and the ministry of internal affairs".[2]

The Democratic Party rejected the result and on the same day, protests began in Masan against the fabrication of the election results. The discovery of the mutilated body of a sixteen-year-old boy who had participated in these protests in early April caused a wave of further protest, and Rhee's obdurate attitude led to the intensification of unrest into the April Revolution,[6] though Rhee forced Lee to withdraw from active politics.[7] The results of the elections were nullified after the Revolution's triumph later in the year, though Chang himself resigned on April 23.[8]