Where Have the Tigers, Wolves, and Leopards Gone?

KBS Documentary, “Extinction.”

Where have all the tigers gone? They used to appear in downtown Seoul 100 years ago. Why have the wolves, which lived on the peninsula for almost two million years, extinguished within only 50 years? Why on earth did the red foxes disappear from Korea yet can be seen in almost every continent except the rain forests?

KBS1’s special documentary “Extinction” provides us with the answer at 10:00 p.m. from Wednesday to Friday.

The program collected official data back from 1915 to 1943 and found that the number of captured tigers, wolves, and leopards combined amounted to about 4,000 during the period. It means the actual number would have been far greater.

However the last tiger, leopard, and wolf were last seen in Hoengseong, Kangwon province in 1924, in Gayasan National Park in 1962 that later died in the zoo, and in Umsong, Chungbuk province, respectively.

The program explains that tigers were excessively caught in an effort to exterminate harmful animals and to raise Japanese military morale during Japan’s colonial rule, while wolves were devastated because they ate rats poisoned with rat-killers during the nationwide health campaign to kill rats in the late 1950s.

The last fox in the Jirisan National Park was caught by a poacher in 1978 and remains stuffed. Foxes extinguished because of reckless hunting due to the popularity of fur in the 1920s and 1930s and also from eating rats poisoned with rat-killers. “Although Korean foxes are gone, similar species are found in Mongolian plateau and you will see their lives in the second day program,” producer Seo Yong-ha said.

Meanwhile, the program also warns of the endangered Korean native goats. The research on excrement of the goats found that the Korean native goats show little difference in their genes, which means they have mated with relatives, isolated in Soraksan National Park.

Jin-Yeong Lee ecolee@donga.com