hankyoreh

In April 1971, a poacher in Eumseong County, North Chungcheong Province, shot and killed the last remaining male Oriental stork on the Korean Peninsula. The last remaining female was taken to the zoo at Seoul Grand Park, where it died in 1994, making the Oriental stork officially extinct in Korea. The Korea National University of Education’s Eco-Institute for Oriental Stork (ECOSOS, sic) brought in storks from nests in Germany and Russia in 1996 and began artificially breeding storks. In 2015, ECOSOS established a park for Oriental storks in Yesan County, South Chungcheong Province, where eight storks were released into the wild. It was the first time in 44 years that an Oriental stork had graced a Korean mountainside.

Five years later, 87 wild storks have been sighted in Korea. Korean scientists have released an additional 58 storks during that time. To further encourage the wild stork population to prosper, the South Korean government plans on establishing stork territories all throughout the country starting next year. GPS trackers indicate that some storks have migrated to North Korea and even as far as China.