[News Today] RARE BUTTERFLY SPECIMENS RETURNED

[LEAD]
After 90 years, over a hundred butterfly specimens collected by the late Dr. Seok Joo-myung, a pioneer of South Korean butterfly research, have finally returned to Korea. Included in this invaluable collection are rare specimens from North Korea.

[REPORT]
Dull yellow patterns on brown wings.

This is one of the features of Erebia theano, a rare species found only around the Gaema Plateau on the Korean peninsula.

The late Dr. Seok Joo-myung, the pioneer of Korean butterfly research, had collected this specimen and donated it to Kyushu University in Japan.

Finally, after 90 long years, one hundred twenty-five specimens left by the trailblazing lepidopterist were returned to Korea.

Suh Min-hwan/ Head, Nat'l Institute of Biological Resources
Erebia theano is found only in North Korea. Polygonia c-album and others exist in South Korea, but they are very rare species.

The devoted researcher traveled all over the peninsula during the Japanese colonial period and collected some 750,000 butterflies.

He dedicated his life to studying butterflies, classifying roughly 240 species of Korean butterflies and drawing up a map of their habitats.

He left more than 100,000 butterfly specimens but most of them were destroyed in a fire during the Korean War.

Only about thirty specimens remained in Korea, all of them designated as national registered cultural heritage.

Oh Ho-seok/ Dankook Univ. Seok Ju-seon Memorial Museum
Three days before Seoul was reclaimed, the butterfly specimens kept in the national science museum where Seok worked were destroyed in a bombing.

The return of Dr. Seok Joo-myung's samples is likely to accelerate the studies on the rare butterflies in North Korea and on the ecology of Korean butterflies during Japanese occupation.