An escaped wolf has taken the country by storm after breaking out of its enclosure at a South Korean zoo and roaming freely for a week.
A two-year-old runaway named Neukgu escaped from his home in Daejeon, sparking a nationwide cub-hunt as well as inspiring the meme crypto-coin of the same name.
More than 300 firefighters, police and military troops were deployed to search for the wolf, which eluded them for a week.
Neukgu first appeared on thermal imaging cameras the day after the escape, appearing as a glowing blob among leaves near Daejeon O-World.
But soon he disappeared from the area around the zoo and theme park from where he came.
After his escape, authorities immediately closed a nearby elementary school as a security precaution.
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Loudspeakers at the zoo, which was closed to visitors after her escape, were blaring wolf howls and park announcements – the sounds Neukgu had grown up hearing.
According to local media, when officers replaced the battery of the camera drone, it lost track of time.
In another success on Monday evening, the local fire department was alerted to the sighting of Neukgu, who was spotted on a mountain about 1.2 miles away from O-World.
A video of the wolf was posted on social media, capturing it running down the road in the dark, into the headlights of a vehicle.
Authorities launched a search and rescue operation to find him, involving dozens of police officers and military drones.
But just when they think they are closing the trap for the wolf, he will slip through the cracks and be off the radar again.
The discovery gained national attention as the community joined the search effort.
According to Chosun Daily, dozens of calls were made to authorities in the days following Neukgu’s disappearance, including from some of the boys who howled wolf – elementary school children who mistook the dogs for Neukgu.
One resident reportedly even tried to help in the search operation by coming with his own wolf dog.
A widely circulated photo showed Neukgu walking down a city street, leading authorities far from the zoo.
However it later turned out to be like being chased by a wild wolf as the image was revealed to be AI-generated.
Authorities captured Neukgu near the Anyang Interchange of the Daejeon Southern Ring Expressway in Anyang-dong on Thursday.
He was then transferred back to his enclosure in O-World.
Born in 2024, Neukgu was part of a program in O-World to restore the Korean wolf, which once roamed the Korean Peninsula.
The animals are now considered extinct in the wild.
According to the creators of the meme coin Neukgu, the elusive wolf has since become a “symbol of freedom”, a “wolf that will not remain caged”.
The meme coin has recorded a trading volume of almost £110,000 ($150,000) in the last 24 hours.
