Scouts face heatwave, typhoon in South Korea

A campsite plagued by heatstroke, an imminent typhoon alert, and an early evacuation were some of the things three local scouts were not expecting as part of their “once in a lifetime” jamboree.
But despite the unideal conditions, they reckon it was “the most fun” they’d ever had.
Hauraki Plains College students Thomas Brown, Cayden de Graaf, and Hamish Paterson have returned from the World Scout Jamboree in South Korea – which was evacuated four days before anticipated due to an incoming typhoon.
The 15-year-olds are all Venturers with the Clevedon Scout contingent and were three of the 92 Kiwis that attended the 12-day-long jamboree in the southwestern Jeolla province.
They were joined by 42,000 other scouts from 150 countries.
“The campsite was 2kms in width and 5kms in length,” Hamish told The Profile. “It was split off into different sections: 18 subcamps and each subcamp had 3,500 people in it. It took us ages just to cover half of it.”
The boys said the jamboree began with 50 cleaners on site, but then the South Korean Government enlisted the help of its army and increased the cleaning staff to 700.
“At the start, you walked in and you wanted to walk back out,” Cayden said. “They did fix it up in the end but by that time, we had a typhoon coming through and we were moving out.”
The World Scout Jamboree is held every four years, with the next in Poland in 2027. The students said the camp’s set up was akin to the Olympics’, but the province’s 34 degree heat and 75 per cent humidity made for some challenging living situations.
“You’d wake up at 6am because it was too hot to sleep any further, go pick up your breakfast for the group, go and cook it, and from there you basically had designated activities,” they said.
“But with 42,000 people trying to get on the buses at the same time, it was hard to get to your activity… and they were worried about people’s health because it was so hot and people were getting heat stroke.”
The New Zealand contingent of 67 scouts and 25 adults left the site early on August 8 but continued on to Seoul for the jamboree’s closing ceremony. Thomas said they’d heard that the campsite had a couple of new “swimming pools” following the typhoon.
But even though it wasn’t the experience they may have been anticipating, the three scouts all agreed the jamboree was “amazing”.
“Yes, things went bad but you can’t do anything about that,” Cayden said. “For me personally, I enjoyed it. It’s something we’d never forget.”
“It was definitely the most fun I’ve ever had,” Hamish added. “You couldn’t recreate it if you tried.”