In three days, hundreds of residents raised 10.7 million won ($8,000) to pay for the hospital bills for a beloved Gwangju street cat that was injured in a hit-and-run.
The fundraising campaign was launched on April 26 through Instagram for Jullyang-i, the unofficial mascot for Seoyoung University in Gwangju, after it was left critically injured after being hit by a bus a day before.
About 700 people participated in the campaign that ran from April 26 to 28, according to a post on Monday on the cat's Instagram account run by Seoyoung University students.
The raised funds will go toward paying the 12 million won in medical bills. After receiving surgery, Jullyang-i was in stable condition and could be seen standing unassisted and meowing, according to an Instagram post on Monday.
The accident took place while Jullyang-i was crossing the junction in front of the university’s main gate. Jullyang-i was left in a critical condition, with multiple fractures in the face.
A shopkeeper in the neighborhood who knew Jullyang-i spotted the cat lying by the road and took it to a nearby veterinary clinic. But as it had no owner, the cat was sent to an animal shelter after being given some painkillers.
Kim Jang-yun, a security guard at Seoyoung University, later came to know about the accident and brought it to a larger hospital, where it underwent three hours of surgery.
However, Kim, 67, could not afford to pay the surgery bills and requested help from some students who launched the fundraising campaign.
Kim expressed gratitude to those who had helped save Jullyang-i, whose name roughly translates to "the striped cat" in English.
“The cats never fail to wait for me in front of the security office every day at 5:30 a.m. How can I call them merely animals?” Kim said in an interview with local media Tuesday.
