South Korea's celebrity shark finally gets escorted out of a city canal and then swims right back in

After more than a month as the most famous resident of a South Korean city canal, Bukangi the shark was finally shown the door. She left politely. Then she let herself back in.

A shark with a fan club

Bukangi is a female dusky shark roughly 10 to 11 feet long. Her species is endangered. She turned up on Sept. 18 in a narrow man-made waterway at North Port Waterfront Park in Busan, the big port city on the country's southeast coast. Her nickname comes from Bukhang, the Korean word for North Port.

People could not get enough of her. Crowds lined the bridges to watch her loop past office towers and park benches. More than 1.6 million visitors have stopped by and the city quietly adopted her as an unofficial mascot.

Third time was the charm, for a few hours

Officials worried she was not eating and had a scraped snout. The canal water was also getting colder. Dusky sharks prefer warm seas. Two earlier efforts with water jets and big nets went nowhere.

On Wednesday crews tried again. A net hung from a floating platform slowly herded her toward open water while divers and drones helped keep her from doubling back. The operation was streamed live and took about eight hours. Hundreds of fans gathered in the park to cheer and wave goodbye. Around dinnertime she was spotted outside the canal near a pier.

Surprise, she's back

The farewell did not last. By Thursday morning Bukangi had pushed through one of the new barriers and swum back into the canal. For a while she was stuck in the gap between two layers of netting until rescuers pulled the outer layer away.

Crews then beefed up the remaining net. Since then she has been swimming a little farther out each time but keeps circling back to the mouth of the waterway like a guest who forgot her keys. By Thursday afternoon officials said their part of the job was done.

Busan can't decide either

Locals are split. One woman traveled two hours with a cardboard sign protesting the eviction and called the shark a rare gift to the city. Others say the kindest thing is a clean break.

"She should go and live her normal shark life," one fan said, admitting he was sad to see her leave anyway.

Experts think the warm water and plentiful fish lured her in to begin with. With seas warming every year Busan may get more finned visitors. None of them will be easy to say goodbye to.