SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Carrying huge backpacks and water bottles, tens of thousands of Scouts began arriving at university dormitories, government and corporate training centres, and hotels around Seoul and other inland cities on Tuesday as the South Korean government evacuated the World Scout Jamboree ahead of a tropical storm.

The South Korean government had scrambled to keep the 12-day gathering of Scouts going in the face of struggles with heat, hygiene and land use controversies, as thousands of British and American Scouts departed over the weekend.

It wasn’t until Monday afternoon that officials announced the decision to abandon the coastal campsite in Saemangeum, a huge area reclaimed from the sea in the southwestern county of Buan, after forecasters raised alarms that Tropical Storm Khanun was heading toward the Korean Peninsula.

As of Tuesday evening, Khanun was passing through waters 60 kilometres (36 miles) south of Japan’s Yakushima island, which is south of the southern main island of Kyushu. Japan’s weather agency issued warnings for heavy rain and high winds in the southern regions of Kyushu and parts of Shikoku island, east of Kyushu.

The 37,000 Scouts, who hailed from 156 countries and were mostly teenagers, folded up their tents before boarding over 1,000 vehicles for the evacuation that began Tuesday morning. The World Organization of the Scout Movement said all youth participants had safely departed from the Jamboree campsite as of Tuesday evening.

Most of the Scouts will be accommodated in Seoul and the surrounding area.

South Korean officials say the Jamboree will continue in the form of cultural events and activities, including a K-Pop concert in Seoul on Friday.

Scouts from Britain, who had transferred to hotels in Seoul over the weekend because of the extreme heat at the Jamboree site, visited a war memorial and the former presidential palace.

Matt Hyde, the chief executive of UK Scouts, said the organisation will need to use more than £1 million from its reserves to cover the cost of moving 4,500 Scouts and adult volunteers, an expense that could impact its activities for the next five years.

UK Scouts had become increasingly concerned about sanitation, the availability of food, medical services and the “punishing heat.”

“We feel let down by the organisers because we repeatedly raised some of these concerns before we went, and during, and we were promised things were going to be put in place and they weren’t,” Hyde told the BBC.

Hundreds of scouts from Norway had already left the site on Monday, citing concerns about the complications of moving together with tens of thousands of other Scouts. Geir Olav Kaase, leader of the Norwegian contingent, said the Scouts arrived at their hotels in Incheon by 9 p.m. Monday.

The 1,500-member Swedish contingent was transferred to three university dormitories in the central city of Cheonan.