[Student Voices] Panda Island
Published: 20 May. 2024, 09:38
Doyun Kim (Songrye Middle School, Grade 1)
While I was living in Taiwan, I often visited the Taipei Zoo to see the pandas. Once, I saw a panda that looked like a human wearing a panda costume. The way she ran around the cage was the same way a little kid would run around the house. I waved at her so she would turn my way. I don’t know if she really saw me, but she seemed to be staring right at me. In that moment I felt like we shared the same emotions. As if the panda knew what I was thinking about, and we could communicate like this, just by looking at one another.
After I moved back to Korea, my interest in these special animals led me to Fu Bao, the first panda born in Korea. Unfortunately, Fu Bao was being sent to China. On the last day we could see her in Korea, many people gathered at Everland to say goodbye. Through YouTube streaming, people like me who weren’t able to visit Fu Bao in person could still watch her last scene. As she chewed bamboo and walked around the cage, she seemed happy, healthy and well cared for. I wondered why she needed to go to China. I did some research and found out that pandas are an endangered species. Therefore, before Fu Bao becomes an adult, she must go to China and get ready to reproduce, since there are no male pandas in Korea except Le Bao, her dad.
Le Bao was sent to Korea in 2016 as a gesture of friendship between China and Korea. It was also a way to help preserve pandas and do research on them. China has sent other pandas to friendly countries around the world, in an effort to strengthen ties with them. This fact makes me hopeful that after Fu Bao has a few children, China will send her and her family back to Korea. It will make Koreans feel thankful and closer to China.
In order to better protect and support these pandas, we can make a sanctuary in our country just for them. Since Korea has a small amount of land and the cities are so crowded, the best place for this sanctuary would be an uninhabited island. We have more than 3,300 islands in South Korea and around 2,880 of them are uninhabited. Moreover, most of them belong to the government. We can build a fence around one of them to make the perfect conditions for pandas to live. Since it’s hard for scientists and zookeepers to go frequently to the islands, we can set up cameras and sensors and collect information using big data and AI.
The right island can be found in Jeolla province near Damyang, because Damyang is famous for bamboo. To build a perfect sanctuary for pandas, two important points should be considered: food and shelter. First, pandas’ staple food is bamboo, and Damyang has the best natural conditions for growing this plant. Fu Bao would eat well! Second, for the pandas’ shelter, we should make many spacious caves, and build tree-houses for the pandas to live and play in.
Once Panda Island is made, many people will travel to the sanctuary and we can raise funds to maintain it. When China sees that it’s a success, they’ll send even more pandas to live there. A hundred years from now, there may be thousands of pandas on the island—the legacy of Fu Bao, the first panda born in Korea.
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
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