Yi Si-yeong
Also called: Lee Si-young
Younger brother of Yi Hoe-yeong who went into exile with his brothers, helped found the Sinheung school, served the Provisional Government as Minister of Justice and Finance and became the first Vice President of the Republic of Korea
Known as Seongjae, he was the fifth of the six sons of Yi Yu-seung, Minister of Personnel, in a family descended from Yi Hang-bok. He served the Korean Empire as governor of Pyeongan and head of the Hanseong court, but when Korea was annexed in 1910 he and his brothers, Yi Hoe-yeong and Yi Seok-yeong among them, sold their property and went into exile in western Jiandao, where they founded the Gyeonghaksa and the Sinheung school at Samwonbo in 1911.
In 1919 he helped found the Provisional Government in Shanghai as Minister of Justice, and later served for years as Minister of Finance, managing its ever-straitened accounts. Through its hardest years, when the movement had scattered, he held the government together with Kim Gu and Yi Dong-nyeong.
The only one of the six brothers to survive, he returned in November 1945 with the Provisional Government leaders. Elected the first Vice President of the Republic of Korea in July 1948, he resigned in 1951 in protest at corruption and misrule, including the National Defence Corps scandal. He died in 1953 in wartime Busan. He received the Republic of Korea Medal in 1949.