In South Korea, 36,000 scouts are being evacuated from the World Scout Jamboree, the large international gathering of scouts which was interrupted due to the imminent arrival of a typhoon in the place where the camp had been set up.
The evacuation began at 10 in the morning local time (2 in the morning in Italy) and according to plans it should last more than six hours. The South Korean government has involved hundreds of vehicles in the operations: we are talking about a thousand buses, plus 270 police vehicles and some helicopters. The participants in the rally will be moved to the innermost areas of Korea in various reception facilities, mainly around the capital Seoul, where the typhoon is not expected to pass. The meeting is scheduled to continue until August 12 and the South Korean government has guaranteed that the activities will continue, even if it is not yet clear how.
The World Scout Jamboree is organized once every four years: this year’s edition is the twenty-fifth and involves over 150 countries with 43,000 young people mainly between the ages of 14 and 18, of which around 1,200 from Italy. The scout camp was set up with hundreds of tents over an area of more than eight square kilometers with few trees and shaded spaces in Saemangeum, Buan Region, a city southwest of Seoul.
(Choe Young-soo/Yonhap via AP, File)
From the first days the meeting had had several problems: first of all the heat. South Korea, like much of Asia, had one of the hottest summers in decades, with temperatures between 33 and 38 degrees Celsius and high humidity. The Saemangeum scout camp was set up in an area with virtually no natural shelter, on the seashore, along a river estuary in an area that had been reclaimed some decades ago. For this reason, the scouts had no way of escaping the heat: from the first day the organizers had had to manage hundreds of people who complained of symptoms such as headaches, nausea, dizziness and exhaustion.
To this were added further complications of the South Korean organization: the soil of the camp had drainage problems, there was no food for the participants with special diets, the medical services were considered insufficient and there were major hygiene problems, especially in the toilets: “Imagine that the toilets that were used by thousands and thousands of people were not emptied as regularly as needed, and you will understand what the participants saw,” he told the BBC Matt Hyde, the head of the British scouts delegation.
For this reason, even before the arrival of a typhoon was expected, some scout delegations had decided to abandon the Jamboree: the 1,000 scouts of the United States had gone to Camp Humphreys, an American military base, while the 4,500 British scouts they had been transferred to a hotel in Seoul. Singapore’s small contingent also left Saemangeum.
Then came the typhoon (called Khanun), which first hit southern Japan bringing very heavy rains and very strong winds and which should arrive in the Saemangeum region on Thursday morning. World Organization of the Scout Movement (WOSM) Monday he announced that all scouts present at the rally would be evacuated from the camp.
Scouts break camp (Kim Myung-nyeon/Newsis via AP)
Lee Sang-min, the South Korean interior minister, said that of the 36,000 scouts present, 13,500 will be transferred to 64 different facilities in the province of Gyeonggi, the one that surrounds the capital Seoul. About 3,100 will be transferred to Seoul and another 3,200 will go to the nearby city of Incheon. Nine thousand scouts will instead be transferred to 25 different structures in the provinces of Northern Chungcheong and Southern Chungcheong, in the central part of the country.
To house the scouts, the government is preparing school dormitories, government buildings and hotels, and has announced that it will take care of providing hygienic conditions and adequate meals for the thousands of scouts who will be scattered throughout the country.
(Na Bo-bae/Yonhap via AP)
The South Korean government would like the Jamboree activities to continue, despite everything: the scouts should “complete their program with a happy heart”, he said Minister Lee. In reality it is not yet clear how the activities will continue, and if they will continue.
The big organizational problems of the Jamboree are complicating life for the South Korean government: some media have spoken of a “national shame”. Kim Gi-hyeon, MP and head of the ruling People’s Power Party, issued a public apology and called for an investigation into how South Korean taxpayer money was spent in organizing the event.
Ahmad Alhendawi, the secretary general of WOSM, said this was “the first time in more than 100 years of Jamboree that we have had to face so many problems all together,” but he also praised the South Korean government for its assistance.
(Choe Young-soo/Yonhap via AP)