Runaway wolf in South Korea inspires meme coin and presidential concern

Neukgu, a roughly two-year-old male wolf that escaped from its enclosure in a South Korean zoo. (Daejeon City Corporation/Handout Via Reuters)

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 35 kilograms, 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 ⁠decentralized cryptocurrency exchanges, including PumpSwap, with a trading volume of about US$140,000 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 ‌program 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.

(Reporting ‌by Minwoo Park and ​Joyce Lee; Editing by Ed Davies and Janane Venkatraman)