SEOUL — A wolf that escaped from its enclosure in a South Korean zoo has spent three days on the loose, captivating the public, spawning a cryptocurrency meme coin and even prompting a message of concern from the country's president.
Neukgu, a roughly two-year-old male wolf weighing about 35kg, appeared to have slipped out of the O-World zoo in Daejeon on Wednesday morning by burrowing under a fence, a zoo official said.
A nearby elementary school was closed as a precaution, while more than 100 personnel, including firefighters, police officers and military personnel searched for the wolf, according to fire authorities and a city official.
Drones equipped with thermal imaging cameras were deployed, the city official told Reuters on Friday.
President Lee Jae-myung weighed in on the social media platform X, urging authorities to ensure a safe outcome.
"I hope no human casualties occur, and I pray that Neukgu also returns home safely," he wrote in a post on Thursday, which was reshared more than 1,400 times.
The incident in Daejeon, about 170 kilometres south of the capital Seoul, has caught the imagination of the public and online communities.
A meme coin named "Neukgu" has appeared on decentralised cryptocurrency exchanges, including PumpSwap, with a trading volume of about US$140,000 (S$178,000) in the last 24 hours as of Friday.
An English-language X community for the wolf has also attracted nearly 500 followers.
Born in 2024, Neukgu is part of a programme to restore the Korean wolf, a species considered extinct in the wild.
South Korea has seen other high-profile zoo escapes in recent years, including a zebra that was found wandering the streets of Seoul for several hours in 2023 before being caught.
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