A two-year-old male wolf named Neukgu was safely captured on Friday and returned to his enclosure after a nine-day search that gripped South Korea. The capture sparked celebrations across the internet as the animal had become a national celebrity.
Neukgu had escaped from the O-World zoo in the central city of Daejeon on April 8 by burrowing out of his enclosure.
The incident raised significant safety concerns for both the public and the animal. Animal rights activists questioned if the wolf could survive outside the zoo and expressed worry that he might be killed during the capture process, noting that a puma that escaped from the same zoo in 2018 had been killed.