Some 43,000 scouts arrive in South Korea from around the world for the Jamboree
The 25th Jamboree is set for 1-12 August in Saemangeum, Buan County. This is the second time the event is held in South Korea after the 1991 edition. For young people from 170 countries, this is the first gathering since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Asia now accounts for more than 50 per cent of the world's scouts.
Seoul (AsiaNews) – Some 43,000 teenagers from around over the world, aged 14 to 16, are converging in South Korea to experience the “camp life” at the 25th World Scout Jamboree.
A campsite was expressly built for them on a reclaimed area in Saemangeum, Buan County, in the southwestern part of the country, which will remain after the event.
Young people from about 170 countries will meet at the site, making it one of the largest gatherings ever, the largest since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Organised by the Scout Movement, the gathering brings together every four years young people from all over the world to the same place to learn about each other's cultures.
The theme of this year’s Jamboree – Draw your dream – is meant to highlight the willingness of scouts worldwide to exchange ideas about the future with their peers.
“The upcoming Jamboree will mark the first large-scale event to be held in Korea since before the COVID-19 pandemic,” said South Korea’s Gender Equality and Family Minister Kim Hyun-sook, who supervised preparations for the event together with the organising committee.
To facilitate participation from every part of the world, South Korean authorities simplified visa procedures and set up immigration checkpoints reserved for scouts and a helpdesk at Incheon International Airport.
For the safety of the participants, rapid COVID-19 tests facilities have been established at the campsite, with quarantine spaces equipped for those who may test positive.
South Korea was awarded the 2023 Jamboree at the World Scout Conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, in August 2017. This will be the second time South Korea holds the event after Goseong, Gangwon-do province, in 1991.
During the two weeks of Jamboree, teenagers from all over the world will also have an opportunity to taste typical Korean food, attend traditional shows, and even view performances by K-pop artists and singers, on 6 August.
Scouting in Asia and South Korea
A British army officer, Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell, founded the Scout Movement in 1907, initially in the United Kingdom and Europe.
Scouting arrived in Asia soon after, and today Asian scout associations count for more than half of all scouts in the world, with branches even in countries ruled by dictatorships, providing the only alternative form of education to what is offered by the continent’s authoritarian and pseudo-democratic regimes.
In many Asian countries, scouting occurs in schools, the only meeting point for young people, especially in rural areas.
In Korea the movement arrived 1922 when the country was under Japanese rule. Korean Scout representatives were also sent to the first Far Eastern Scout competition in Beijing in 1924, a sort of "Scout Olympiad" -.
Eventually, Japanese authorities imposed a ban on scouting in 1937, which remained in place until 15 August 1945, because Korean scouts fuelled anti-Japanese resistance, like the “stray eagles”, Italian scouts who engaged in underground activities during Italy’s fascist regime.
Between 1945 and 1950, when war breaks out in the Korean Peninsula, the Scout Movement develops almost exponentially, taking roots quickly, gaining recognition from the World Scout Movement in record time.
Following the end of the Korean War in 1953, scouting was completely wiped out in the northern part of the country where a dictatorship was established, while in the South, it continued to grow with a membership that today stands at 221,000.
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