Tens of Thousands of Teen Scouts Evacuate South Korean Campsite Ahead of Killer Typhoon

First the heat, now the storm.

Officials raced to evacuate tens of thousands of boy and girl scouts from their South Korea campsite on Monday as Typhoon Khanun bore down on a global youth gathering that’s become the jamboree from hell.

Some 1,500 American Scouts fled the World Scout Jamboree last week for the safety and air-conditioning of a U.S. army base after hundreds of teenage participants from around the world collapsed in record 93-degree heat and inadequate facilities. 

“I would like the Korean government to apologize to the world,”  Justin Cauthen, parent of a 14-year-old scout, told the New York Times on Saturday after his son began vomiting from dehydration and found the campsite’s clinic closed and locked.

“Me and my wife just want him home safely at this point.”

An estimated 4,000 British scouts abandoned the campsite, located on reclaimed swampland in the southern Jeolla province, for hotels in Seoul, the capital. 

Now, with Khanun scheduled to make landfall later this week, officials are scrambling to find accommodations for more than 36,000 teens and volunteers from 153 countries. The storm killed three people and dumped more than a foot of rain on parts of Japan over the weekend. 

The evacuation is set to begin Tuesday morning, interior ministry spokesman Kim Sung-ho told reporters.

The office of President Yoon Suk Yeol said the scouts would be put up in the Seoul area. Organizers were asking local universities if they had spare rooms in their dormitories. Choi Chang-haeng, secretary-general of the jamboree’s organizing committee, said more than evacuation 340 sites, including community centers and gyms, had been identified. 

This was the first World Scout Jamboree to be held since the coronavirus pandemic emerged in 2020. 

The government had announced a plan to bring air-conditioned buses to the campsite to combat the heat wave before the storm forced a full evacuation.

"Everyone is disappointed, it feels very sad," Swedish scout Elliot Daar told SVT News.