Carrying huge backpacks and water bottles, tens of thousands of Scouts began arriving at university dormitories, government and corporate training centers, and hotels around Seoul and other inland cities on Tuesday as the South Korean government evacuated the World Scout Jamboree ahead of a tropical storm.
The South Korean government had scrambled to keep the 12-day gathering of Scouts going in the face of struggles with heat, hygiene and land use controversies, as thousands of British and American Scouts departed over the weekend.
It wasn’t until Monday afternoon that officials announced the decision to abandon the coastal campsite in Saemangeum, a huge area reclaimed from the sea in the southwestern county of Buan, after forecasters raised alarms that Tropical Storm Khanun was heading toward the Korean Peninsula.
As of Tuesday evening, Khanun was passing through waters 60 kilometers (36 miles) south of Japan’s Yakushima island, which is south of the southern main island of Kyushu. Japan’s weather agency issued warnings for heavy rain and high winds in the southern regions of Kyushu and parts of Shikoku island, east of Kyushu.
The 37,000 Scouts, who hailed from 156 countries and were mostly teenagers, folded up their tents before boarding over 1,000 vehicles for the evacuation that began Tuesday morning. The World Organization of the Scout Movement said all youth participants had safely departed from the Jamboree campsite as of Tuesday evening.
Most of the Scouts will be accommodated in Seoul and the surrounding area.
South Korean officials say the Jamboree will continue in the form of cultural events and activities, including a K-Pop concert in Seoul on Friday.
Scouts from Britain, who had transferred to hotels in Seoul over the weekend because of the extreme heat at the Jamboree site, visited a war memorial and the former presidential palace.
Matt Hyde, the chief executive of UK Scouts, said the organization will need to use more than £1 million from its reserves to cover the cost of moving 4,500 Scouts and adult volunteers, an expense that could impact its activities for the next five years.
UK Scouts had become increasingly concerned about sanitation, the availability of food, medical services and the “punishing heat.”
“We feel let down by the organizers because we repeatedly raised some of these concerns before we went, and during, and we were promised things were going to be put in place and they weren’t,” Hyde told the BBC.
Hundreds of scouts from Norway had already left the site on Monday, citing concerns about the complications of moving together with tens of thousands of other Scouts. Geir Olav Kaase, leader of the Norwegian contingent, said the Scouts arrived at their hotels in Incheon by 9 p.m. Monday.
The 1,500-member Swedish contingent was transferred to three university dormitories in the central city of Cheonan.
Northern European nations are dealing with their own extreme weather, with strong winds and rains causing floods, damaging buildings and knocking out electricity at thousands of homes in Norway and Sweden, Denmark, Lithuania, Finland, Estonia and Latvia.
The North Jeolla provincial government, which governs Buan, had hoped that the Jamboree would draw attention and investment to a controversial swath of reclaimed land.
Concerns had been raised beforehand about having such large numbers of young people in a vast, treeless area lacking protection from the heat as South Korea grappled with one of its hottest summers in years. After the Jamboree began, hundreds of participants were treated for heat-related ailments.
The government insisted the event was safe enough to continue and channeled resources to keep the event going, adding medical staff, air-conditioned buses, military shade structures, and hundreds of workers to maintain bathrooms and showers, which some Scouts had complained were filthy or unkempt.
Saemangeum is the result of a 19-year project to build a 33-kilometer (21 mile) seawall, which South Korea describes as the world’s longest.
Since the wall was finished in 2010, the land the wall helped to reclaim from the sea remains largely barren. Once seen as a major development project for a region lacking an industrial base, it’s now increasingly viewed as an ecological blunder that wiped out coastal wetlands and hurt fisheries production.
Local government officials insist that the project remains key to the region’s economic future, despite its failure to deliver on early promises.
In a 2018 document describing its successful bid to host, the North Jeolla provincial government wrote that its main reason for hosting the event was to lure badly needed infrastructure investment to the area after initial plans didn’t progress as hoped.
“North Jeolla Province needed a project that could spur the construction of an international airport and other SOC (social overhead capital) investments to further encourage the development of Saemangeum’s inner areas,” provincial officials wrote, using an acronym that refers to infrastructure projects.
Local officials continue to pursue plans for new highways, ports and an international airport. The airport was initially supposed to be built for the Jamboree, but construction hasn’t started yet.
Organizers said the campsite will not be used for any other events after the Scouts leave.
Tropical Storm Khanun has meandered around Japan’s southwestern islands for more than a week, dumping heavy rain, knocking out power and damaging homes.
Early on Tuesday, the storm was centered 350 kilometers (217 miles) south of Kagoshima, a city on the southwestern tip of Japan’s main southern island of Kyushu. Khanun produced winds of 108 kph (67 mph) with gusts up to 144 kph (89 mph) and was slowly moving north, the Japan Meteorological Agency reported.
The West Japan Railway Co. said it would suspend some Shinkansen bullet train services on the country’s main island of Honshu from Tuesday night through Wednesday morning. Flights and ferries in and out of Kagoshima in southern Kyushu also were suspended Tuesday, according to the prefecture.
South Korea’s weather agency, which measured the storm at typhoon strength with max winds of 126 kph (78 mph) as of 9 p.m. Tuesday, expected it to gain strength slightly before making landfall Thursday morning. It’s expected to bring strong winds and heavy rains to South Korea from Wednesday to Friday.
In an emergency meeting to discuss the storm on Tuesday, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol called for officials to be aggressive with disaster prevention measures, including evacuations of residents in risk areas, to prevent injuries or deaths. He also said the country will do its “utmost” to ensure the safety of the Scouts so that they can “return home with good memories.”
South Korea’s Ministry of the Interior and Safety instructed local officials to prepare to shut down coastal areas, hiking trails, river parks, underpass tunnels and other places vulnerable to flooding.
More than 270 police cars and four helicopters were deployed to escort the buses transporting the Scouts, said Interior and Safety Minister Lee Sang-min.
“This is the first time in more than 100 years of World Scout Jamborees that we have had to face such compounded challenges,” said Ahmad Alhendawi, secretary general of the World Organization of the Scout Movement, who credited South Korea’s government of “mobilizing all available resources” into the relocation effort.
“It’s disappointing that these adverse weather conditions have forced us to shift our plans,” he said.
Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo, Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen, Denmark, and Cara Rubinsky in London contributed to this report.
© Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
25 Comments
sakurasuki
37,000 people will learn that climate change is real and earth have more tornadoes and typhons in recently.
https://www.greenpeace.org/eastasia/blog/6988/how-the-climate-crisis-is-making-typhoons-worse/
falseflagsteve
What’s wrong with them not even in uniform. There’s girls there too, surely they should be in the Girl Guides.
The world has gone insane
sakurasuki
Those uniforms are outdated, today we have more clothing that are more comfortable which can accommodate extreme heat, they just choose to stick with that uniform.
TaiwanIsNotChina
Because even more of them would be passed out from heat exhaustion if they were in uniform maybe?
falseflagsteve
Taiwan
The uniforms are only trousers and a shirt and they can be short trousers and a short sleeved shirt.
TaiwanIsNotChina
They are also cotton, typically, and multilayered. Not going to compare to something designed to keep you cool.
falseflagsteve
Taiwan
The uniform is no worse than what those badly dressed young people are wearing. Only one of the, has a scout hat on and I’m still flabbergasted why girls are there. It should be called a scouts and girl guides event surely.
What is going on and why do all good things have to be ruined?
starpunk
Glad at least the Scout leaders have the sense to pull up their tents and go.
EFD
Golly, it’s like the whole world is getting hotter for some reason.
if only there were a term for this systemic change.
falseflagsteve
EFD
El Nino
2020hindsights
falseflagsteve
Scouts is open to all and welcomes young people and adults, regardless of their gender.
Blacklabel
Yeah I second, El Niño.
and a season called….”.summer.”
when the “weather” has been some level of “hot” every year since any of us have been alive.
Especially when there are no trees to provide a thing called “shade”.
Sh1mon M4sada
Many Koreans are telling me that it's only because there are foreigners that the government has bothered to round up the thousands of cars to evacuate the scouts. On other occasions, eg rising flood waters, sinking ferries, crowd rushes etc., it's up to the individuals to save themselves, government services are only there for the elites.
aaronagstring
Girls have been allowed in the (Venture) Scouts since 1976, later open to younger girls in 1991. Did you complain 30 years ago?
It looks like they’re leaving the Jamboree area, going home. So uniform not compulsory. Have you ever attended a Jamboree? Uniforms are worn on parade. When they relax, they wear everyday clothes, with their neckerchief and toggle. In the photos they are wearing the neckerchief, if you look closely. But then, you just seem to want to be on your high-horse, and go, “ooooh girls, girls.”
Strangerland
Ever notice how the only official group of people on the planet who deny climate change, are one particular political party, in one political country? The same people whose venn diagram with the election deniers is a perfect circle.
falseflagsteve
Strangerland
Which group are these my good friend?
falseflagsteve
Aaron
Wasn’t no girls in it in England when I was in the scouts, that for sure.
Blacklabel
No I haven’t noticed as that is actually untrue.
Strangerland
As I said "ever notice..?"
I guess you didn't notice.
Strangerland
Other than being 100% accurate, I agree, it's entirely incorrect.
餓死鬼
Girl Scouts was founded over a hundred years ago.
Strangerland
I may be new MAGA, but the conservative party in Canada says climate change is real:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/opinion-election-conservative-party-climate-platform-1.6155156
Stupid Canadian conservatives, they need to Make Canada America Again.
falseflagsteve
Can someone explain clearly to me what the term “Maga” actually means?
Blacklabel
It’s just something non Americans scream when they have trouble making a logical thought process backed up by facts.
Paustovsky
Human greed, ignorance and corruption knows no bounds.
Then, to add insult to injury, they drag the teenagers around the most boring places in Seoul.