HAD ENOUGH

International Boy Scout Event Officially Canceled Over Typhoon Fears

The gathering had already turned into a disaster thanks to a punishing heat wave.

The organizers of the embattled World Scout Jamboree in South Korea officially ended the event early on Monday due to an incoming typhoon. The international gathering of over 40,000 Boy Scouts had already become a living hell because of a sweltering heat wave that left hundreds of attendees ill, prompting an exodus of thousands of kids from the campgrounds. Typhoon Khanun is forecast to hit the southern Jeolla province—where the event was taking place—on Thursday. The gathering was supposed to go until Aug. 12, but the South Korean government said the typhoon meant it was no longer safe to continue, the jamboree’s organizers said Monday. U.K. Scouts boss Matt Hyde told the BBC that his organization had spent more than $1.2 million in the unexpected relocation of British Scouts from the campgrounds to hotels in Seoul amid the crisis. “We had commitments to those reserves that will of course mean that we can’t now do things that we wanted to do over the next three to five years,” he said.