School in a Streetcar in Korea

So smashed up were the Korean school buildings by the fighting that it has even become necessary to use abandoned streetcars as emergency classroom for refugee children (as shown here). About 60% of all classrooms were destroyed or badly damaged and 80% of the educational equipment was lost. By 1953, UNKRA had allocated nearly $8,500,000 to rebuild South Korea's educational system. About 3,000 new classrooms are in process of construction; another 1,000 have already been repaired. Some 300,000 textbooks have been bought for a drive against illiteracy. More than 3,000 tons of paper have been imported to print another 38,000,000 textbooks; and the Government and UNESCO are working with UNKRA on a textbook printing plant at Seoul which is due to open at the end of June 1954.