Kang Jeong-gi, a peach farmer in Sejong, met an unexpectedly precious animal on the 22nd. When an elder, an unwelcome visitor, was setting a fence to prevent him from entering the farm, he felt something strange. I looked up and saw an animal similar to a dog. However, the tail hair of the animal was thick. At the moment, Mr. Kang came up with a fox shawl for Korea. I quickly took a picture with my mobile phone. The animal, staring at the water, disappeared over the fence.
The animal in the picture has brown and red hairs wrapped around it, and white hairs on the bottom of the neck and the tail are clear. The mouth and ears were pointed. It was a fox known for extinction in the meantime.

Kang Jung-ki recalled the first impression of a fox, saying, "It was as clean as a pet dog in my home, and the hair was very shiny." As expected, the animal Mr. Kang saw was a fox. Researchers at the National Park Industrial Complex, which is working on fox restoration in Sobaeksan, visited the orchard and confirmed that the animal in the picture is a fox. <Red Fox> was designated as an endangered species first class in 2012. It was a familiar animal in Korea in the 1950s, as it lived in the mountains around the villages where people lived rather than in deep mountains. Like tigers and rabbits, they often appear in legends or folktales. Children always enjoyed singing foxes when they were playing tag games. "Wow, fox, what are you doing? Sleep, sleep ..." In this way, the fox was part of our lives.

Experts cite the mouse-catching movement that took place in the 1960s and 1970s as the primary cause of the fox's disappearance. It was argued that when the food was scarce, the rats ate grain, so they put rat poison to catch rats nationwide, and the fox ate dead rats and suffered secondary damage. Along with this, some pointed out that the number of foxes has declined sharply while catching to get shawl or fur for winter. For two factors, the fox began to disappear, and what was discovered in the Demilitarized Zone in 1980 was finally known to have never been found in the wild.
Where did the fox come from the Sejong Peach Farm in 40 years? Song Dong-ju, the director of the National Park Authority's Conservation Department, raised three possibilities. Mr. Song is a leading figure in the restoration work of the Bandal Bear in Jiri and the Fox in Sobaek. First, it may be a fox raised by an individual or a group for pets. This is because the fox found on the farm is so clean that it is hard to believe that it lives in the wild. The second is likely to be the descendants of a fox radiated from Sobaek Mountain. The Ministry of Environment and the National Park Corporation have been working on fox restoration around Sobaeksan since 2012. Increasing population by inducing fertility in the wild by emitting foxes from China. GPS is being tracked when it is radiated, but the fox was not attached to the discovered fox. Song said he thinks that the young born in the wild may have escaped the management network of the industrial complex and came to Sejong. The distance from Sobaeksan to Sejong is about 120km in a straight line. Whether true or not, the possibilities are sufficient. This is because there was a case in which it was confirmed that one fox released on Sobaeksan climbed to North Korea in April 2015. The fox was released with nine other foxes a year ago, but left the group to go up to Gapyeong and Paju, Gyeonggi Province, and unexpectedly broke the news after sending a signal from the mountain near the Kaesong Industrial Complex in North Korea. They traveled 200km from Sobaeksan to Kaesong. The last possibility may be an unidentified wild fox that has never been known. In this case, it is very good news, and it will have a great impact on fox habitat and ecological environment investigation and restoration.
Researchers from the Fox Restoration Team at the National Park Authority installed two observation cameras in the mountains near the Sejong Peach Farm where the fox appeared. A catch frame was placed on the road where the fox could travel. This is because, in order to reveal the identity of the fox, it needs to be captured and genetically analyzed. The genealogical tree for radioactive foxes has already been prepared, so if you work on a control, you can immediately determine whether you are a descendant of radioactive foxes.

As of last year, there were 54 foxes living in Sobaeksan, Yeongju-gun, Gyeongbuk. There are 43 radiant individuals, and 11 foxes are born and raised in the wild. I wonder if a fox who appeared in Sejong, like a fox who moved north five years ago to Kaesong, North Korea, has pioneered its habitat this time. Expect the fox's challenge and pioneering spirit.