Some details on how bad conditions still remain. This sounds worse than anything we've heard so far:
https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/2023/08/06/national/socialAffairs/jamboree-World-Scout-Jamboree-Saemangeum/20230806181815666.html
Prompting the withdrawals were health concerns, especially for scouts aged 14 to 17, many of whom had fallen ill from the scorching heat as temperatures hovered close to 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit).
At least 2,500 scouts had fallen sick as of Sunday.
The daily sick count is quickly rising, too.
On Wednesday, there were 400 patients, and by Thursday, the official opening day of the Jamboree, that number had doubled to over 900.
On Friday, it spiked even further to over 1,400.
Common ailments include bug bites, skin rashes and heat exhaustion. To make matters worse, a Covid-19 outbreak has been raging at the site since Thursday.
The whole article is worth a read. It talks about how the organisers were in denial and downplayed problems right up until the opening ceremony.
This second article seems to confirm that its not the UK contingent who are being 'soft' - it seems to be a universal feeling amongst adults throughout the nations:
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2023/08/113_356442.html
But complaints have been coming out since as early as July 27 when adult volunteers from foreign countries started arriving at the vast sunbaked site, a location that has the world's longest man-made dike, measuring 33 kilometers, resulting in a huge land reclamation project that has been years in the making.
"It's just very disappointing how the Korean Scouts worked so hard to portray their organizing of the event as a potential success and hyping it to be a great and innovative Jamboree," one International Service Team (IST) volunteer, traveling with a delegation from a Latin American country, told The Korea Times on Tuesday. "The reality is that it has been a complete mismanagement and safety hazard for young people and the adult volunteers on site already."
On July 31, three of 300 IST adult volunteers collapsed due to the heat, according to a document written by volunteers on site and shared with The Korea Times. "If one percent of the Jamboree collapses every day there will be around 7,700 injuries by the end of the Jamboree just due to heat," the volunteers claimed.
The following day saw more than 400 heat-related illnesses, according to the organizing committee. However, it is difficult to draw conclusions from this data, as the actual number of participants on site on Tuesday remains unknown. While it was widely reported that all 43,000 Scouts visiting the country were present, the actual number was likely much smaller.
As of Tuesday, only four of the total 17 camping zones were fully ready to receive participants, while nine were partially ready and another four were unusable. Major contingents including those from the U.S. and U.K. delayed their arrival in order to provide time for the organizers to prepare the campsites. Many also had to relocate to other camping plots.
Remember at this point that the UK, US, Aus and NZ contingents were delayed onsite - this suggests all the others already onsite were given the available / better pitches to begin with. That 13 of the 17 sites were not ready the day before the opening ceremony is piss poor.
The article goes even further into detail about conditions:
Pallets were distributed for participants to set up their tents on so as to stay out of the water. But even a shortage of tents was reported, and on Monday night some people had to sleep on top of picnic tables, out in the open where bugs could bite them all night.
The flooding also exacerbated other problems, such as moving around on site. Most people resorted to walking on the roads, which were the easiest routes between various sites and were most likely to be dry. "This creates problems between buses, cars, heavy vehicles and golf carts that must navigate around the pedestrians," the volunteers said. "Shuttles do not go to the island with camp HQ on it. This makes it very difficult to get to the Jamboree hospital, which is a safety issue."
AND
Other complaints were also raised, including the lack of barriers separating the camps of Scouts and adult volunteers. "These are very big problems as keeping kids safe from abuse is something all staff members were trained on and the rules are impossible to enforce effectively without separation and identification," the volunteers said in the document.
Another issue at that time was the lack of health support ― both mental and physical.
"I had a heat stroke and a panic attack at the same time and went unconscious," an IST volunteer from a northern nation said. "A day later I started to experience the same thing again only to find that the medical tent was closed."
"I haven't seen so many people crying, emotionally collapsing and having mental health issues so quickly in a camp," the Latin American IST volunteer said on Tuesday. "I'm at a point that I'm considering leaving the Jamboree. Quite a few adult volunteers have done that already."
He added that he had been told to refrain from posting complaints online. "There's a sort of media blackout about the negative aspects of the event," he said. "We have been asked to not post on social media about the flooding and hot weather."
By Wednesday, the situation hadn't improved much.
"Many contingents arrived in the morning and they have to put up their tents in the heat of midday. The U.K. volunteer staff were asked to go and help the young people and some couldn't finish because of the heat," the volunteer said on that day.
The volunteers were carefully watching the weather forecast, which has been showing the possibility of rainfall in the second week. "We had a contingent meeting today to discuss an evacuation plan in case the site floods completely and what support our embassy can do," the IST volunteer said.
Tuesday night was the opening ceremony, which included a visit by President Yoon Suk Yeol. It was reported that between 83 and 108 attendees required medical attention during this event.
"Opening ceremony is something you would think they would put a lot of effort on, but it was yet another disaster to add to the list," the volunteer said. "Throughout the ceremony, the paramedics kept coming in every couple of minutes to pick up people and take them to the ambulances."
"The opening ceremony was a big security catastrophe," said a Scout visiting from Germany, aged 18. "The one road where everyone has to leave was also the road that was used by the emergency vehicles. At the end of the show we got the information from our head of contingent that we shouldn't leave because of how many people had to leave via one small road. We then stayed in the arena for about an hour and when we then left it still was pretty full."
The Latin American volunteer added that a member of the medical team told him later that night that they were at full capacity, and they had not received much of the equipment that had been requested and advertised.