Knives come out as World Scout Jamboree ends

Almost every public safety crisis in Korea has led to finger-pointing, and the 25th World Scout Jamboree will likely be no exception as politicians on both sides began drawing knives over disastrous preparations for the event.

Deep puddles are visible at the abandoned World Scout Jamboree campsite in Saemangeum, North Jeolla, which was evacuated on Monday ahead of Typhoon Khanun. [YONHAP]

Almost every public safety crisis in Korea has led to finger-pointing, and the 25th World Scout Jamboree will likely be no exception.

On Friday morning — hours before the festival’s closing ceremony at the World Cup Stadium in Sangam, western Seoul — Korean politicians on both sides of the aisle began drawing knives over disastrous preparations for the event.

The liberal Democratic Party (DP), which is currently in opposition to the government, appears to have leading members of the current Yoon Suk Yeol administration squarely in its sights as the chief culprits of the fiasco.

Speaking at a meeting of the party’s supreme council on Friday, Rep. Jung Chung-rae described the whole country as “being thrown into chaos” due to the hurried evacuation of Jamboree participants from their heat-stricken campsite in southern Korea ahead of Typhoon Khanun.

Jung castigated the Yoon administration for foisting the responsibility to accommodate 43,000 scouts and volunteers on companies and regional authorities, whom he said were “enlisted” to make up for Jamboree organizers’ failure to adequately prepare for the event.

“This crisis wasn’t the result of a war, a national emergency, a natural calamity or even a disaster,” he said, adding that “people who are waking up to the fact that we have become a second-rate country overnight should be rightly asking themselves if they should mourn or take their vengeance [on the government].”

Rep. Kang Sun-woo, who serves as a spokesman for the DP, told reporters on Friday that the Yoon administration “should issue an official apology to the people” for allowing a global event “to fall into dysfunction.”

Kang also said leading government figures, including Gender Equality Minister Kim Hyun-sook, Interior Minister Lee Sang-min and Culture Minister Park Bo-gyoon, as well as Prime Minister Han Duck-soo and Yoon himself, should all be held accountable for the Jamboree’s ill management.

Scrutiny will likely fall especially heavily on Kim, in part due to her earlier statements claiming that the Jamboree site would be ready to host the event by August.

At a parliamentary hearing in October 2022, the gender equality minister told lawmakers skeptical about the organizers’ preparedness that the ministry had “made all contingency plans” for the Jamboree to proceed “even in the event of extreme heat or a typhoon” — both of which materialized.

In response to her remarks, liberal Democratic Party (DP) lawmaker Lee Won-taeg warned Kim that “history will judge you.”

But the conservative People Power Party (PPP), which is aligned with the government, took issue with the DP’s focus on blaming the Yoon administration, arguing that responsibility for mismanaging the Jamboree should lie with the North Jeolla provincial government, which pushed to host the event at Saemangeum, a treeless reclaimed flatland in Buan County.

“The DP is passing over the actual culprits in its pursuit of destabilizing the Yoon administration at all costs,” PPP Rep. Yun Jae-ok said during a party meeting at the National Assembly the same day.

Although the North Jeolla provincial government and previous Moon Jae-in administration promised in Korea’s 2017 winning bid to host the Jamboree that they would create a “lush forest” to provide shade at Saemangeum, the area remained a sunbaked field pockmarked with deep puddles up until the festival officially began on Aug. 1, when the mercury in Buan County soared over 34 degrees Celsius.

Yun also accused DP spokesman Kim Han-kyu of revealing his party’s “secret hope” to “see the country fail” with his criticism yesterday that mismanagement of the Jamboree had ruined Korea’s bid to host the 2030 World Exposition in Busan.

But for now, the DP appears to have the majority of the public on its side.

In a survey conducted by media company Media Tomato from Monday to Thursday, 60.2 percent of respondents chose the Yoon administration as the main culprit behind the Jamboree’s ill management, while 31.2 percent selected the preceding Moon administration.

The previous day, news outlet Dailian released results showing 65.6 percent of respondents to its poll, which was conducted from Monday to Tuesday, faulted the government for the Jamboree crisis.

While public support for the Yoon administration rose by 2 percentage points from the previous week to 35 percent, disapproval also rose by one percentage point to 57 percent, according to polling conducted by Gallup Korea from Tuesday to Thursday.

BY MICHAEL LEE [lee.junhyuk@joongang.co.kr]