KOREA: Gossip & Flame

One day last week, after putting the family rice on to boil over her charcoal pot, Mrs. Ko II Nam took a housewife’s chance and strolled out to pass the time with a neighbor in the alleys of Pusan’s cluttered, teeming Yongju district. When Mrs. Ko returned, the rice had boiled over, the charcoal had spilled onto the floor, and the straw matting of her tiny shack was afire. Moments later the entire house was ablaze. As neighbors tried to put out the fire, a brisk wind whipped the flames against the houses next door, and soon they too were burning. On the fire roared for twelve hours, through block after block of tinder-like huts, cutting a swath a mile and a half long and half a mile wide through the refugee-packed city. The cost in casualties: three dead, scores injured, 2,800 buildings destroyed and more than 28,000 made homeless.