Can Fu Bao Return To South Korea?

6,000 people standing in the rain, not for a concert, not for a film premiere, not for a world leader, for a panda. And not just any panda, but one they had watched grow up on a screen, laughed over on a couch, cried about at 4 in the morning when the world felt too heavy to carry alone. That morning in April 2024, when the truck carrying her began its slow, careful journey out of Everland Amusement Park in Yongin, grown men and women sobbed openly like children. Some had arrived before dawn, some had waited in line for more than six hours, and the waiting board at the park gate said it clearly, 400 minutes. But no one left, because this goodbye only happens once. And now, more than a year later, the question those same people ask every single day hasn't changed. When is she coming home? This is the story of why an entire country still hasn't let go of Fubao. It started in the middle of the world holding its breath. The year was 2020, and anyone who remembers what that felt like knows how quietly desperate everything had become. Masks, distance, the strange new silence of streets that used to be full. Korea was no different. And then, on the night of July 20th at 9.39pm, something happened inside the panda world enclosure at Everland in Yongin that would eventually reach the hearts of hundreds of millions of people who didn't even know they needed it yet. A panda named Aibao gave birth to the first giant panda ever born through natural breeding in South Korea. The cub weighed 197 grams. She was 16.5 centimeters long. She was so small she could fit in the palm of a hand, and absolutely no one outside that room had any idea what had just entered their lives. They named her Fubao in November of that year. Fu means luck, bao means treasure, together, a treasure that brings happiness. And that is exactly what she became, not just as a label, but as a lived reality for a country that had been running on empty for months. But before she ever became a cultural phenomenon, before the viral videos and the sold-out merchandise and the waiting lines that stretched around a park, there was one man in the room with her, a zookeeper named Kangchel Won. He had worked at Everland since 1988. He had spent decades caring for animals in a job that, as he once recalled in an interview, a parent at the park had once used to threaten their child, study hard or you'll end up like that man over there. He carried that memory quietly for years, and then Fubao was born. And everything he had ever quietly doubted about the meaning of his work dissolved into something he couldn't quite find words for at first. He started calling himself her hal-bu-ji. In Korean, hal-bu-ji means grandfather, but the word Fubao's fans used was a slightly softened affectionate version of it, the way a very small child might say it, hal-bu-ji, and it stuck, not because it was a marketing decision, but because it was simply true. He talked to her in Chinese to help her adjust, knowing that one day she would have to go, and wanting her to recognize the sounds of the country she would eventually call home. He made her toys out of bamboo. He celebrated her mealtimes like holidays. He recorded himself watching her eat and posted it online, and people watched it not because it was spectacular, but because it was the most tender thing they had seen in a very long time. Here's what you have to understand about why the Korean public fell so completely, so irreversibly in love with Fubao. It wasn't just that she was cute, though she was impossibly so, it was the timing. During a period when touch was forbidden and distance was mandatory, watching a panda and her grandfather play through a screen felt like the one uncomplicated thing left in the world. Everland's YouTube channel, Malhanun Dongwol Bupa TV, which translates roughly to The Talking Zoo, started uploading their interactions, and the views climbed in ways that surprised even the people posting them. Eventually, those videos would accumulate more than 500 million views. The park's own records show that from the day Fubao first appeared before the public in January 2021 through the day she left, approximately five and a half million people visited Everland's Panda World just to see her. That is roughly one in ten South Koreans, one in ten people in an entire country, traveled to a single theme park because of a single bear. And what those people said afterward, in the comments, in the fan letters, in the occasional media interview, that is what sets this story apart from any ordinary celebrity story. Kang Cho Won himself has spoken about it in public, visibly moved each time. He read the messages that came in. People wrote that they had overcome depression while watching Fubao videos, that they had beaten insomnia, that they had survived panic disorder, that they had done their prenatal meditation sessions with her playing on a screen in the background, wanting their unborn children to begin life surrounded by something soft and full of peace. In a country with one of the highest rates of work-related stress in the developed world, a small panda eating bamboo with theatrical enthusiasm had become, without anyone planning it, a kind of national medicine. By the time February 2024 arrived, something bittersweet was already in the air, because everyone who loved Fubao also knew from the very beginning that this story had a predetermined ending. Under the agreement between South Korea and China that governed the loan of Fubao's parents, any panda cubs born in Korea were required to return to China before their fourth birthday. The reasoning was scientific, pandas reach sexual maturity around age four, and China's breeding programs depend on managed introductions that have to happen at the right time. No one had hidden this. Zookeepers had even written publicly about it in January of that year, explaining in patient detail why Fubao needed to go back, and why it was, ultimately, the right thing for her. But knowing something is right does not make the heart agree with the head, and Korea did not agree quietly. On February 8, 2024, the city of Yongin, wherever land is located, did something that had never been done before. They issued Fubao an honorary citizenship certificate. It was made from bamboo. It read that Fubao, born in Yongin on July 20, 2020, had brought happiness to the entire Korean population, and that this certificate was issued to preserve the bond she had formed with the city. A panda, an official citizen of a city in South Korea. That is the level of what was happening. And then came March 3, the last day the public could see her. Everland extended her exhibition hours from a half day to a full day, hoping to give as many people as possible one final look. It wasn't enough. The wait time hit six hours. People came from every corner of the country. In the cold, in the early morning dark, a large message board was set up outside where visitors could write her their goodbyes. Fubao, it was so good to have you. Thank you for every warm moment. I love you. I won't forget you. The board filled up completely. Kang Chaewon and his fellow zookeeper Song Youngkwon, known to fans as Grandpa Kang and Grandpa Song, made her a special farewell meal. They crafted a bamboo sculpture shaped like the Bao family, all the pandas together, and presented her with a bouquet made from the yellow rape flowers she'd been surrounded by on walks. When the visitors who were saying goodbye looked at the two men, both of them were crying. Kang said to the fans gathered there, Don't worry, we will take good care of Fubao and get her safely home to China. And then, quieter, he added, If I cry now, I'll have to cry again in 30 days. April 3rd, the actual departure. About 6,000 fans came, standing in the rain, holding signs, wearing panda-themed capes gripping small flags printed with her face. The truck that carried Fubao was a special non-vibrating vehicle of the kind typically used to transport semiconductor equipment, because nothing about this send-off was going to be careless. As the vehicle moved slowly through the park one last time, the road underneath it was covered in stickers shaped like rape flowers bearing messages of love. She passed through it all unseen, sealed inside for her safety, but the people lined up along the route stood there anyway. When the truck finally moved out of sight, the sound of weeping rose from the crowd. What almost no one knew that morning, what emerged only later, was that the night before Fubao left, Kang Cheol-won's mother had passed away. The departure had been scheduled. The international clearance paperwork for the cargo flight was already complete. Replacing him as the authorized escort at the last moment was practically impossible. The approval process alone takes more than a week. His family gathered and talked it over, and eventually they told him, go, mom would have wanted to see Fubao off. He went. He accompanied her all the way to Sichuan province, into the Shenshuping Panda Base at the foot of the mountains, checked on her one final time in the quarantine facility – a special exception the Chinese side made for him out of respect – and then flew home. When he landed and went back to the empty enclosure to clean it out, he managed to stay composed for a while. And then he sat down in that quiet room that still smelled like her, and he wept. He flew back to see her three months later, in July. The reunion was watched by millions online. She heard his voice from across the enclosure, that familiar call of Puya, and she moved toward the sound, not rushing, not dramatic, just turning her head, orienting herself, coming closer, as though something in her still knew, as though three months in a new country and a new language hadn't completely overwritten the first voice she ever really knew. But the story of why Korean fans want her back doesn't end with missing her. It takes on a sharper, more urgent tone in the months that follow. Because what fans began to notice, and what started reaching the news, were signs that not everyone agreed Fubao was thriving the way she should be. In early June 2024, images circulated online that appeared to show dark marks on Fubao's neck. The Chinese facility said the photos were misunderstood. In December of that year, a video emerged on a fan-run Instagram account showing Fubao appearing to tremor during feeding, a full-body shaking that alarmed everyone who saw it. The Shenshuping base acknowledged the incident publicly, announced she was being moved to a non-public area for observation, and closed to visitors entirely until year's end. Chinese experts later characterized the trembling as a natural neurological response, similar to brief muscle spasms seen in other pandas, and said all tests had come back within normal ranges. The base reopened its display of Fubao on March 25, 2025, announcing that after more than a hundred days of careful monitoring, she had recovered fully. She appeared in the video they released eating bamboo shoots, calm, eating well, moving normally. But the months of uncertainty had already done something to the Korean fan community that would not simply undo itself with a reassuring video. The worry had crystallized into something more organized, more determined. Fan groups had begun holding demonstrations in front of the Chinese embassy in Seoul. One group placed a full-page advertisement in the New York Times, calling for attention to Fubao's welfare. Petitions appeared on international platforms. On Change.org, the appeal called for independent veterinary oversight, the release of medical records, and, in the event that welfare standards continued to go unmet, consideration of a return to South Korea. A citizens' petition filed through the Seoul Metropolitan Government's public platform requested that the city government formally seek to renew a lease arrangement with China and bring Fubao back. The Seoul city government eventually replied that it had not yet initiated the formal procedures for such a process. By October 2025, when Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in Gyeongju for the APEC summit, a small group of protesters gathered near the venue wearing yellow vests with the words Save Fubao printed across them, calling for her return. There were 15 people, standing in a city dressed for a diplomatic occasion, chanting for a panda. And something about the image, the absolute sincerity of it, the refusal to feel embarrassed, says everything about what Fubao means to the people who love her. There is now an organization formally dedicated to the cause of her return called With Fubao, which frames her case not just in emotional terms, but in diplomatic and cultural ones. They describe Fubao's potential return as a bridge between Korea and China, a symbol of affection between the two countries, a project that could advance animal welfare awareness on an international scale. Their website notes that Fubao-related content has accumulated more than 1.2 billion views across global platforms, and if you count all the fan-created content built around her, the number climbs much higher. This is not a niche interest. This is a global cultural phenomenon that started in a maternity room in Yongin. Now, here is what you need to feel, underneath all of this, to understand why none of it is going away. Fubao did not choose Korea. She was born here. She grew up in its air, in its seasons, alongside a man who talked to her every single day in a language that was neither her own nor his, because he was already thinking about the world she was going to have to enter without him. The bamboo shoots she was given were Korean bamboo shoots. The rapeseed flowers that covered her farewell road were the same flowers that bloomed every spring across the Korean countryside. When she heard Kang Chol-won's voice three months after she left, she turned toward it. She didn't run, she didn't leap, she just turned, like someone who has learned that home is something you carry inside you, even when the address changes. What Korean fans are reaching toward when they say they want her back isn't just the desire to see a cute panda at a local zoo again, it's the wish to repair something that felt finished before it was ready to be finished. It's the particular grief of loving something that was never entirely yours to keep. It's the knowledge that she was healed here, and that she healed others here, and that no international agreement could change what that actually means, even if it can determine where she lives. She is the first panda ever born in Korea through natural breeding. She is the creature who helped people through a pandemic that asked everyone to endure loneliness in silence. She is the reason a zookeeper who once heard a parent use his job as a cautionary tale for a misbehaving child eventually stood on a stage in tears saying that a panda had opened a new world for him. She is the thing that made 5.5 million people get in a car or on a train and go stand in line, sometimes for hours, just to be in the same building as something that made them feel like the world was still, quietly, okay. The fans who are asking for Fubao to come home know, most of them, that the road back is complicated. They know the agreements, the procedures, the diplomatic weight of every panda that China loans to the world. They know that the probability of an official return is not simple. But they also know that love doesn't calculate probability. It just keeps showing up, in the rain, holding a sign, standing outside an embassy, writing a message on a board that is already full. They will keep showing up. They have been doing it since the beginning. And if you are watching this right now because something about Fubao ever made your chest feel a little lighter, if you ever found yourself staring at a 10-second clip of a panda tumbling over her own feet at 3 in the morning and feeling inexplicably a little more okay than you already understand, you don't need a policy briefing to understand what this is. You just need to remember the way she looked, eating her bamboo in the golden afternoon light of Everland, completely unaware that she was carrying an entire country's softness on those small, round shoulders. We'll keep watching for her. And if you want to be here for whatever comes next, you know what to do. Hit subscribe, turn on the notification bell, and share this with someone who still has Fubao saved in their camera roll. Because some stories aren't over just because the first chapter ended.