A day for zookeeper Han Hyo-dong, Seoul Zoo’s master zookeeper who has worked there for the past 32 years, begins at 6 a.m.

At the crack of dawn, he arrives at his office next to the Beast Pavillion, located at the very back of the Seoul Zoo in Gwacheon. 

As soon as he changes his clothes and puts on his boots, he walks around the breeding cages and checks each tiger’s condition.

Every morning he writes down detailed logs of the zoo’s 24 Siberian tigers on their conditions and health symptoms. The documents are shared with three other zookeepers in the tiger team during a morning meeting.

After a short briefing, he preps meals for badgers and raccoons living next door to the tigers. Eggs, apples, bananas, carrots, sweet potatoes and grapes are their favorite foods.

Waiting for a truck full of fresh meat for tigers’ breakfast to arrive, he and his colleagues skillfully move and separate the tigers into individual cages to clean their shared enclosure.

One of the most important routines for Han and his colleagues is to sweep and inspect the feces, which is the most effective way of noticing health conditions of the tigers, and to decide whether to leave them in their segregated areas or bring them out for public viewing.

For safety, every door in the tiger’s zone is double locked, and the zookeepers work in a team of two. The strengthened regulation was put in place after their colleague was killed by a tiger when he went to clean the enclosure by himself.

“To this day, I am still haunted by the incident and deeply lament that I should have joined him,” Han said.

According to the Korean Association of Zoos and Aquariums, there are 22 registered zoos and aquariums nationwide. Aside from these, there are also smaller, mobile zoos that operate by visiting culture centers at department stores, kindergartens and child care centers.

But a number of safety accidents and wider awareness on animals’ rights in recent years have pointed to the lack of legislative system to protect and manage the animals in the zoos, or for the safety of their keepers.

The National Assembly in May this year passed the revised law on zoos and aquariums aimed to enhance the protection of animals kept at the facilities, after three years of delays. But animal activists pointed out that the revised version fails to serve the full propose by having deleted some of the crucial items to protect the animals from any abuse such as by fortifying the watch by establishing a separate state watchdog against animal abuse, or banning forced training or threatening of the animals.

While controversies persist over zoos, such as commercialization of the public zoos due to operational difficulties, they are yet to dent the popular demands of the venues.

“My 3-year-old toddler loves going to the zoo. Seeing the actual animals that she has only seen in picture books completely enchants her. The way her eyes lit up when she saw the elephant for the first time in her life is just priceless,” said Seo Hye-jeen, who said she visits the Seoul Zoo at least once a month.

When the food truck arrives at around 10 a.m., zookeepers, including Han, get busy distributing the 80 kilograms of the chicken and 28kg of raw beef among 24 tigers based on their size and health conditions.

“Ahreum! Suho!” Han calls out tigers’ names.

Tigers eat two chickens at a time but chickens do not need to be chopped as tigers can eat a whole one in several bites, after licking it with their tongues covered with fleshy bristles that soften the meat before they eat it.

The biggest tiger at the zoo’s Beast Pavilion, 7-year-old Koa, weighs about 210 kg. But he also receives the same portion as other tigers. He weighed just 2.3 kg when he was born.

At breakfast, the beasts are welcomed by the visitors, many of them children. This is when Han is on high alert, since many of the young animal watchers tend to lean over or climb up the railings and knock on the glass wall. Zookeepers have to advise their parents to keep the children safe, and later, erase several hundreds of fingerprints left on the glass windows.

Twice a day at 2:30 p.m. and 4 p.m., Han climbs up to the top of a square tiger enclosure with a microphone attached to his mouth, in order to introduce each tiger and demonstrate feeding them in front of the visitors. Pieces of raw beef and some chicken legs during this demonstration become the last meal of the day for tigers.

After finishing up the 4 p.m. presentation, zookeepers attend “zoo-university” class hosted by the Seoul Zoo once every month. The class is lectured by a veterinarian residing at Seoul Zoo to share useful facts about animals they take care of.

Finishing up by writing afternoon logs about the tigers, Han takes shower and changes back into his clothes, leaving the office at around 6:30 p.m.

“I feel like these tigers are my kids. I have been there from when they were brought to the breeding center as little babies to become the mighty beasts that they are now. I always feel grateful to have worked with them without getting hurt for so many years,” Han said.

By Kim Da-sol (ddd@heraldcorp.com)