Springtime in Seoul

For one brief, balmy day last week, spring came to the Korean capital, Seoul, and with it a troupe of wandering Korean troubadours whose big number was a spirited rendition of Old Soldier's Never Die. Bombed, beleaguered and beaten into submission four times in the last 20 months by allied and Communist attackers, Seoul has become the most battle-scarred city in the world; yet it, too, resolutely refuses to die. Last week the sound of front-line guns only 30 miles to the north still rumbled in bombed-out Seoul. On snowy mornings, the bodies of refugees frozen to death overnight could still be found among the grey-black blocks of rubble.

Stars & Bars. Fearful of dangerous overcrowding, U.S. Army authorities tried, without success, to keep too many former residents from returning to their city, but the old inhabitants streamed northward into the city over the one usable bridge in ever-increasing numbers. By last week, Seoul's population, once 1,500,000 and recently as low as 150,000, was climbing again to 800,000. Men, women & children worked side by side in the streets hauling away rubble in improvised rattan sledges. Streetcars, blistered, bullet-pocked and windowless, picked their way cautiously along the city's network of trolley tracks; 15 of Seoul's prewar fleet of 150 buses wheezed and coughed along cratered streets. Two brand-new fire engines had just been delivered from Japan.

Restaurants, pastry shops, even a nightclub or two were back in operation. Souvenir sellers were doing a land-office business with G.I. customers. Korean-made flags of the U.S. Confederacy made a brave display at one stall, alongside the flags of South Korea. Other Seoul factories were busily turning out soap, matches and rubber shoes--and cooking utensils made largely of aluminum salvaged from wrecked warplanes.

Much of Seoul's recovery is due to the tireless labors of U.S. Colonel Charles R. Munske, 54, a bluff, benevolent reservist from Brooklyn. As chief of the U.N. Civil Assistance Command for Seoul and the province of Kyonggi, Colonel Munske is nominally only an adviser to Seoul's U.S.-educated Mayor Kim Tai Sun. Actually, he works a minimum of twelve hours a day, seven days a week, coping with the city's problems. Seoul's rebuilding came to a dead stop recently when contractors ran out of nails. Munske begged and borrowed some wire, started a nail factory.

Housewifely Bustle. Food is still scarce and high in Seoul, and black markets thrive everywhere. When military police decided to check all vehicles entering Seoul on the chance that they might be stolen or contain stolen parts, a near famine resulted. All the truckers who had been carrying food into the city promptly hid their vehicles under the nearest hayrack, leaving Seoul to starve until the MPs cooled off. Last week, adulterated whisky was selling for $20 a bottle on Seoul's black markets. On the other hand, G.I. pants (worth $15) could be had for as little as $3.

South Korea is still governed from the provisional capital at Pusan, but last week advance teams of government officers were in Seoul paving the way for an early return to the capital. A few unwelcome citizens were coming back too. Angry residents caught one enterprising Communist on the Han bridge with a supply of explosives and hanged him on the spot from the girders of the bridge he sought to destroy.

Even the city's municipal politics seemed to be returning to their normal state of prewar confusion: Mayor Kim was being investigated by a government investigating committee; he in turn had ordered an investigation of the investigating committee. None of it mattered. Last week Mayor Kim relaxed for a moment on the leather couch in his office and glanced out of his windows at the signs of rebirth among the rubble of his city. "I think we're doing rather nicely," he said.

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