THE ALLIES: Children’s Day

Some 30 years ago, in the days of Japanese rule, the elders of Korea saw no hope of freedom for themselves. But their children, they felt, might be more fortunate. They began to observe May 5 as Children’s Day. Last week battered Seoul celebrated Children’s Day with a parade by the police, who marched 600 strong behind a brass band and a huge placard: “Children Are the Nation’s Flower.”

The nation’s flowers emerged from caves and broken buildings. Beside the budding, shrapnel-scarred elms along the streets, they watched. Now & then a youngster clapped or smiled, but mostly they stood with wooden faces, like tired old people who have found life very hard and who take little joy in parades.

The brass band avoided the mortar-crumpled south gate and the shattered railway station where, on Children’s Day as on all other days, the abandoned, the homeless, the orphans prowled restlessly, begging, stealing, conniving to stay alive. They screamed “chop-chop” (food) at G.I.s, hovered hungrily around the soldiers who uncomfortably ate their rations.

In Seoul’s City Hall plaza meanwhile, there were polite speeches. A select group of 100 boys & girls cheered and clapped on signal. The policemen handed out small packets of candy and food and the children sang and played for a while on the ragged lawns. Before sundown the party broke up. Parents took their children on the long walk home. The children who had no parents to take them home melted back into their caves and cellars.