Although some Oriental White Storks migrates to South Korea mainly to the western and southern coastal areas for wintering, the storks inhabited South Korea in the past as well as Japan. The last native population, however, disappeared in 1971. Since the 1990s, captive breeding has been ongoing mainly by the Korea National University of Education. They selected Yesan County in South Chungcheong Province as the stork reintroduction area. After the Yesan Oriental White Stork Park was established as the base facility, they began the releasing of the storks in 2015. One pair of the released storks bred successfully to raise two fledglings in the wild in 2016.