수안보 suanbo zoo 동물원

As someone that loves animals, zoos aren't exactly the best places to visit. Especially in Korea where the standards of living that animals are subjected to is a lot lower than what I think they should be. But at the same time, I'm generally curious about visiting these places for a variety of reasons. It's usually a depressing visit, and this one wasn't any different, but I don't think it's always a good idea to shy away from or ignore the worst in an attempt to live in a perfect little bubble.

Anyway, some of the images that follow are of taxidermy animals, of live animals (in the zoo) with ailments and just plain old animals in cages. So if you'd rather not see that kind of thing, this would be a good time to go elsewhere. 

Suanbo is a smaller area, so this is a very small zoo and doesn't appear to have a whole lot of care, money or effort put into it that you would see in a big city. So even by Korean standards, it's bad.

 Before I found the zoo, I walked past two halls that looked closed because the lights were out, but were actually open and showed taxidermy animals in one and birds in the other. They also had bears, a tiger, deer, warthogs, but I thought it was pretty interesting that they included guinea pigs because you can buy them at Emart or Lotte(Korean Walmart), the market...

 And some squirrels looking a bit crazed. In the 2 1/2 years I've been in Korea I've seen a squirrel once, so it made more sense seeing these here than the guinea pigs did.

 A little bit farther up the hill was the actual zoo area. One of the first sick animals that I saw, a deer. It looked like it had gnawed its bum raw and had a mouth infection. And the stench coming from the area was overpowering.

 But not as bad as this. The saddest part was seeing this silver fox, with its mouth mutilated and it looked like it was missing teeth... Maybe from an infection?

 In total there were ten, maybe less cages/types of animals. About three of those types were dogs.

 Monkey wondering if I was going to offer it food.

 A Manchurian black bear sounding like it wasn't appreciating the summer heat.
Animals I didn't post pictures of were some dogs (including a raccoon dog) and birds (chickens and turkeys) and that was it for the zoo.

It's located on a hill, so there's also a hiking trail you can take if you keep heading up past the zoo. And you could also check out the driving range if you're into golf, or a few other things. The entire area looks pretty deserted though, as I didn't see anyone else while I was there and it is prime summer tourism season.