The escape of a single wolf exposed a gap in the zoo’s operations. Daejeon O-World, which had closed because of that incident, will reopen on the 5th after completing safety reinforcements.
According to Newsis on the 3rd, Daejeon Urban Corporation, which operates O-World, received an official notice yesterday from the Geum River Basin Environmental Office approving the reopening. The decision followed an on-site inspection conducted at the end of last month to confirm whether the facility improvement measures had been properly carried out. It has been about two months since operations came to a halt because of the accident.
The route out was not through the sky but beneath the ground. In April, the 2-year-old male Eurasian wolf named Neokgu dug under the fence of the wolf safari and slipped out through the loosened gap. Digging burrows is a wolf’s instinct, and the facility had failed to account for that instinct.
The escape lasted ten days. Neokgu was captured near a waterway by the Anyeong Interchange in Jung-gu, Daejeon after being tranquilized. In the meantime, hundreds of police officers, firefighters, and zoo staff searched the Bomu Mountain area.
The incident quickly became a matter of regulatory scrutiny. The Geum River Basin Environmental Office judged the escape to be a violation of the safety-management obligations set out in the Act on the Management of Zoos and Aquariums, and ordered the facility to suspend operations in April. The environmental authority took seriously the danger that could arise from even a single flaw in the fence at a place where people and dangerous animals share the same space.
The key to preventing a recurrence was to reverse-engineer the wolf’s habits. Daejeon Urban Corporation reinforced the wolf safari’s fence and electric lines in a dual system. Most importantly, it laid concrete under the dirt floor in consideration of the wolf’s burrowing behavior, redesigning the facility so that even if the animal dug, it could no longer escape.
The inspection was not limited to one site. From late April for about two weeks, the Daejeon Metropolitan Audit Committee conducted a special audit of the entire facility, including negligence in the management of the animal enclosure. The escape of one wolf became an opportunity to examine the entire zoo operation system.
The question left by the accident is clear: do the standards for confining dangerous animals fully reflect their actual behavior? Neokgu’s escape revealed that there were gaps in those standards. It showed that a design accustomed to blocking the sky had failed to look beneath the ground.
As for the star of the incident, he has become healthier. According to the corporation, Neokgu regained his strength by eating raw chicken instead of ground meat and has recovered enough to jump even higher than before the escape. Even immediately after being captured, he was reportedly lively rather than frightened.
While Neokgu spread online as a meme, time had stopped behind the closed front gate. Eleven businesses, including cafes and restaurants inside O-World, have remained shuttered since the accident and have been waiting for reopening. The corporation is conducting a survey to objectively assess the scale of their losses.
The gate will reopen at 9:30 a.m. on the 5th. A press briefing at the site is scheduled for the day before.