A dog's life in Joseon: Part 1

The wife of an American gold miner and her children at the Oriental Consolidated Mining Company in northern Korea in the early 1900s / Robert Neff Collection

By Robert Neff

• Published Jan 21, 2024 10:21 AM KST
• Updated Jan 22, 2024 10:16 AM KST

Earlier this month, the Korean government announced that it will ban breeding, butchering, distributing and selling of dogs for meat — to take effect in 2027. The dog-meat issue has long been a contentious one between those arguing its part of Korean tradition and those arguing the practice is cruel and barbaric — a vestige of the past when Korea was not as prosperous.

When I came to Korea as a young soldier, my superiors often warned me to be wary of meat served in Korean restaurants as it might be dog. My more experienced peers advised, with a smile, that sometimes ignorance was bliss — so, just shut up and eat. I can count on one hand the number of times I have eaten dog. None of those experiences were by choice. Nor did blissful ignorance play a role — they were the result of a social setting and pressure from older Korean superiors. Even my Korean friends have had bad experiences with dog meat. While one of my friends was completing his military service, his mother sold his pet dog to the neighbor, who ate him. When my friend found out, he was furious but the deed was already done.

Dog meat has long been a subject of interest for American visitors to Korea since the 19th century. One of the earliest eyewitness accounts was in the summer of 1882 when Frank Cowan spent a short time in Wonsan, in present-day North Korea. According to him, “The flesh of a dog is eaten as we eat the flesh of the sheep and hog, that is generally as an ordinary article of diet on the tables of the rich and poor.” Some three decades later, another American — whose time in Korea seems to have been quite short — echoed this sentiment when he wrote, “Unlike most Asiatic races, the [Koreans] are meat eaters [and dogs] being always at hand, afford the necessary food with the minimum of exertion and expense.”

However, not everyone agreed that dog eating was as prevalent in Korea as portrayed in the American newspapers. An American, whom I suspect was one of the early English teachers, wrote in 1888: “It is amusing to us out here in [Korea] to watch the [American newspapers] and read what is said about this little country.” He added:

“There are plenty of unpleasant features about the social condition of these people without filling the minds of outsiders with imaginary ones. Much has been said about the natives being great eaters of dogs’ flesh. After a personal observation of the habits of the people for two years I can truly say that it is only the lower classes that indulge in that luxury. By the middle and upper classes it is considered as detestable as by Americans. However, when one goes through some of the poorer parts of the city and sees people absolutely starving to death, it does not cause any surprise that such food is made use of. Dog flesh is absolutely unknown in [Korean] feasts. A foreigner could sit down to the [Korean] table and eat of almost every dish that is brought him without fear of dog meat.”

While that unidentified observer (whose letter was, ironically, published in a newspaper) was confident a foreigner could sit down at any Korean table and eat anything without fear of it containing dog meat, his missionary peers weren’t.

At a Korean wedding, one missionary wrote: “Soon eatables were brought in & given to each one present. There were candies & fruits & nuts. Kimche (a kind of pickles, highly seasoned) & soup, on top of the soup they sprinkled a meat seasoning (probably dog’s meat).” The missionary did not mention whether or not she imbibed in the soup, but I tend to doubt it.

A year later, in a letter home, a Canadian missionary wrote:

“When travelling, one of our rules was not to ask what kind of meat we had, as one missionary told me he asked and found he had been eating dog-meat, a rare dish with them, eaten only on feast days as the choicest relish. That means [his] appetite was not very keen for some time after, it is needless to say. I dread to ask what I am eating. So I ask no question, not for conscience’s sake, but for stomach’s sake.”

George C. Foulk, an American naval ensign who was attached to the American Legation in 1884, wrote, “The lower people eat [dogs] always, but there is a class of better people who eat dog meat on certain days as a medicine in the summer time.”

The earlier-mentioned Cowan, who was a doctor, provided a more detailed — and racist-tinged — account of Koreans using dog meat as medicine:

“When, however, a [Korean] becomes sick, or rather convalescent after a siege of sickness, the yellowish, muddy color of his skin assumes a lighter and a clearer hue, and in consequence, as the most appropriate food or delicacy for him, the flesh of a yellow or other light-colored dog is prepared! In fine, the restorative powers attributed to the flesh of a yellow dog make it essentially the food of the convalescent in [Korea].”

Cowan ended his description by declaring that a sickness in the household made “it exceedingly uncomfortable for the [family’s] yellow dog.” The steamship that carried Cowan back to Japan had a cargo that “consisted in great part of the skins of dogs which had been eaten as food by the [Koreans].”

Horace N. Allen, an American missionary who arrived in 1884, had many encounters with dog meat and even suggested that eating dog meat was a type of cannibalism because the dogs that were eaten were those who had gorged upon the corpses of executed criminals. In early 1885, he treated a Chinese officer who had been shot in the groin. The Chinese doctors had wrapped the wound in “the skin of a freshly killed dog.” Much to Allen’s surprise, the treatment “served well enough, being fresh and warm,” and the officer was able to ride a horse within three months.

In the winter of 1891/92, a bovine plague (rinderpest?) devastated the cattle population in Korea. Many people, rather than wait for their cow or ox to die from the disease, quickly butchered it and sold the meat. Some unscrupulous sellers even butchered animals that had already died. According to Franklin Ohlinger, “[For] nearly two months beef-eating seemed to constitute the chief occupation of the masses” and many people became violently ill — some even died. “In consequence of this, fat dogs are now in demand, many of the poorer people believing that a corresponding feast of dog’s meat will counteract any poison there may have been lurking in the beef.”

The subject of dog meat was a fairly common subject of letters home.

In April 1891, a visiting missionary described an encounter he had near Fusan (modern Busan). He encountered a man busily engaged in some task in front of his home. The curious missionary approached and discovered the main was busily plucking hair from the tail of a dog he had just killed. Wanting verification of what he was seeing, the missionary asked his servant who readily confirmed it was a dog and declared it was “very good food.” In his journal the missionary wrote:

“After this I cared less than ever for the taste of Korean food. The taste for dog, like that for olives is an acquired one. Of course, a well-groomed poodle would be more tempting than a mangy Korean cur, but [not by] a great deal.”

In 1902, a woman missionary wrote in her journal: “Yesterday in walking down the street with Miss Miller, we passed by a number of men dressing a butchered dog right in the middle of the street on a flat stone.”

Charles Clark’s journal entry from the following year seems to indicate butchering dogs in public wasn’t as common as others implied: “Little of interest occurred there [a village he was visiting], except that outside of a butcher shop nearby I saw my first ocular proof that Koreans eat dog meat. I saw the butcher skinning the juicy morsel.”

In the winter of 1903/04, another missionary described a very unnerving scene he encountered while traveling in the interior:

“In the middle of the group were 8 beggar boys, carving & eating slightly cooked dog’s meat. They had found a dead dog & building a fire of straw & sticks had partly cooked it then divided it among them. The other boys were watching them.”

Judging from the accounts, dog meat was fairly common among Koreans of all walks of life — from members of the Korean court (Min Yong-ik and Yun Chi-ho) to the poorest people who ate anything they could — especially during the famines. What made Westerners talk and write about dog meat so much — perhaps, as we shall see in tomorrow’s article — was the manner in which the dogs were killed.

Robert Neff has authored and co-authored several books, including Letters from Joseon, Korea Through Western Eyes and Brief Encounters.