BUAN: Tens of thousands of scouts were being evacuated on Tuesday from their problem-plagued South Korean campsite to safer areas ahead of a looming typhoon, as Seoul scrambled to accommodate and entertain them.

The mass exodus is the latest blow to the jamboree, which has already seen hundreds of scouts fall ill during a sweltering heatwave, prompting the early withdrawal of American and British contingents as complaints over site conditions mounted.

More than 100 police cars and four helicopters were deployed to escort buses carrying the scouts out of the camp site, with President Yoon Suk Yeol cutting short his annual holiday to help manage the fallout from the jamboree, which has been a PR disaster for his administration.

“This is the first time in more than 100 years of World Scout Jamborees that we have had to face such compounded challenges,” Ahmad Alhendawi, secretary-general of the World Organisation of the Scout Movement, said in a statement.

He said the massive event, which brought together about 43,000 scouts to a campsite in South Korea’s North Jeolla province, had been “very unlucky with the unprecedented heatwave and now the typhoon”.

At the sprawling campsite in Buan on Tuesday, tens of thousands of scouts were packing up their tents and belongings and queuing to get onto buses, with special forces on hand to help with the evacuation.

The government sent more than 1,000 buses to ferry the mostly teenage scouts away from the site to areas mostly around Seoul, saying they would be accommodated in university dormitories and other public facilities.

Interior Minister Lee Sang-min said the government would ensure participants could be “safe and comfortable” at their new lodgings, vowing that the jamboree programme would continue.

He said he hoped the scouts could “finish their schedules with a happy heart”, with the government later announcing a K-pop concert as one lawmaker even called for a special reunion of megastars BTS to salvage the jamboree.

Published in Dawn, August 9th, 2023