Nothing Like a Good Jagyeongdan

By Scott Willson · 2026-10-25

A 3 meter female dusky shark got stuck in a man made canal at Busan’s North Port in mid September, and the city nicknamed her Bukangi and made her an honorary mascot. More than 1.6 million people came to see her, and a crew of YouTubers put on hi vis vests and patrolled the canal every night as a self appointed jagyeongdan, calling out people shining flashlights and lasers at her and one guy dumping food waste in the water. After two failed rescue tries, officials on October 21 used a floating platform pulled by dozens of people on ropes to guide her out to the harbor. Four days later the coast guard detained a streamer who hired a boat to chase her into a restricted area near the passenger terminal for a livestream.

I love this story, it reminds me of Brian Fantana from Anchorman during Panda Watch.

Nothing like a good jagyeongdan, which is a word whose meaning sits somewhere between vigilante group and neighborhood watch, coming to rescue a shark out of a man made river. These guys weren’t even cops. They were YouTubers in hi vis vests with selfie sticks, out there from midnight to 5am telling grown men to turn their flashlights off, cause one of them caught her on camera at 2am twisting away from a light and slamming into the canal wall.

I respect it though. It shows promise for the evolution of the shark. If this happened 20 years ago Bukangi would have just been another bowl of shark fin soup, and instead she got a nickname, 1.6 million visitors, shark shaped ice cream bars selling out at every convenience store nearby and a night shift of volunteers making sure nobody messed with her. The park normally gets about 2,000 people on a busy Saturday.

Leave it to the YouTube streamers to ruin the fun for everyone though. They can’t line up like the other 1.6 million people, they have to rent a boat and nearly kill the shark for views. She finally gets out of the canal after a month, she’s thin, she hasn’t been eating, and some guy hires a harbor boat to chase her into a restricted zone by the passenger terminal so his stream has something to look at. A viewer watching the stream called it in and the coast guard picked him up. Lock em up and throw away the key.