Political dogfight raises questions about what we eat
Various cuts of meat are displayed at a butcher shop in Majang Meat Market, Majang-dong, Seoul, Dec. 2. Korea Times photo by S. Latham
Government legislation seeking to end the dog meat trade by 2027 has stirred ongoing debates about human-animal relations and Korea’s image abroad. But ending the trade is just one of many bigger steps needed to stop the large-scale suffering of animals in the country, according to a renowned philosopher.
Peter Singer, professor of bioethics at Princeton University, told The Korea Times that, “Ending the use of dogs for meat in Korea would be a small but significant step towards reducing the immense suffering inflicted on animals in that country. But ending the use of pigs for meat would be much more significant.”
Last month the ruling People Power Party introduced a bill aiming to phase out the dog meat trade by 2027. In response, the dog meat farmers’ association, known as Edible Dog, threatened to release 2 million canines onto the streets of Seoul before it clashed with animal rights protesters outside the presidential office in the latest chapter of the ongoing feud.
While the practice of eating dog is in sharp decline, some have sought dog meat for its zootherapeutic virtues that requires the animals to be killed while full of adrenaline — which results in excessive suffering. This practice has been defended by some with the Korean concept of “jeong,” an interrelatedness shared by all living things through the land, according to research by Julien Dugnoille, Ph.D., an anthropologist of human-animal interactions at the University of Exeter.
“Dogs represent a particularly complex postcolonial symbol in South Korean society today,” said Dugnoille, the author of “Dogs and Cats in South Korea: Itinerant Commodities,” published in 2021 by Purdue University Press.
“For many South Koreans, dogs are both a symbol of resistance against successive cultural imperialism and a symbol of a much-stigmatized practice characterized as a barbaric practice by foreigners and an alleged obstacle to modernity. Due to the continuous stigmatization of the practice up to this day, dog consumption is both a symbol of pride and shame.”
A store sells 'jokbal,' or pig feet, at Namdaemun Market in central Seoul, Dec. 2. Korea Times photo by S. Latham
Animals as food
All the while, millions of pigs and other livestock continue to be raised, slaughtered and eaten in Korea, under various and largely undocumented conditions, to feed a country in love with its vast and delicious food traditions. With the exception of Korea’s strict vegetarian Buddhists and nonmainstream eating cultures such as veganism, questioning the industrial processing of animals and the ease of their consumption is not the norm here. Rather, cute smiling cartoon pigs on the windows of barbecue restaurants are.
“In general, we are ignorant of the abuse of living creatures that lies behind the food we eat,” Singer wrote in his highly influential 1975 classic “Animal Liberation Now.”
“Buying food in a store or restaurant is the culmination of a long process, of which all but the end product is delicately screened from our eyes. We buy our meat and poultry in neat plastic packages. It hardly bleeds. There is no reason to associate this package with a living, breathing, walking, suffering animal.”
At Majang Meat Market in Seongdong District, electric meat saws ring out through the alleys where thousands of stalls sell cuts of Korea’s beloved “hanwoo” or Korean premium beef, pork, tongues, intestines, bones, pig's trotters and more. Like all great markets, there is a sense that you never know what you may find. Most of it is finely packaged premium cuts under LED lights behind glass. Fridges hum and groan. A butcher smokes a cigarette while examining his work. On this cold Saturday evening in December, many are working hard. Christmas is approaching. Bright decorations are paired with jazz and the beginnings of feasts.
According to Statistics Korea, in the third quarter of 2023, broiler chickens numbered 90 million and pigs over 11 million. These numbers reflect a fraction of the animals reared and slaughtered for meat consumption here. Indeed, Korea satisfies much of its appetite for pork through imports from the U.S., Spain and elsewhere.
By comparison, the dog meat industry is small. According to Humane Society International (HSI), up to 1 million dogs are slaughtered for consumption each year in Korea. A 2023 Nielsen Korea poll commissioned by HSI found that the majority of participants supported an end to the trade which appears to be on its last legs.
Dugnoille, who has spent nearly a decade studying the topic in Korea, noted that far fewer dogs are consumed compared to pigs, cows and chickens here. “In that sense, the hybridity of the status of dogs, compared to the fixed status of other livestock species in South Korea, as elsewhere, is a sad privilege, and also a fate whose visibility might help to raise awareness among some human populations from post-domestic societies about the prevailing normalization of the commodification of other species whose death is almost universally perceived as less ‘grievable' than that of man’s best friend.”
Figure 3A subway exit leads up to Namdaemun Market in central Seoul, where a pet shop displays a large photo of two puppies, Dec. 2. Korea Times photo by S. Latham
Dogs as pets
At the top of the subway steps at Namdaemun Market in downtown Seoul, a pet shop looms large, beaming a photo of two soft puppies. Here, foreign visitors abound, intrigued by the fried foods, fascinating alleyways, cafes, clothing stalls and a litter of toy battery-powered puppies barking and hopping in a cardboard box.
Korea’s pet industry is growing. Around one in four Koreans now own a pet — mostly dogs. The number of households with a cat or dog has almost doubled in the last decade.
Dogs are often seen sitting in prams being pushed by their owners. And many dogs are abandoned in Korea, with estimates reaching above 100,000 a year and the numbers growing, demonstrating a disturbing trend and the ugly side of animal ownership.
“The phenomenon of thinking of pets as family and treating them like humans is now widespread in South Korea,” According to K-FoodTrade.net, a platform of Korea Agro-Fisheries & Food Trade Corp.
“As a result of the growth of K-Pet Food, driven by the pet culture and pet-humanization trend in South Korea, the market size, product diversity and quality level are developing at a rapid pace.”
Globally, the pet industry continues to grow and pet humanization has become the basis for premium pet products such as food, health care and insurance. In late November, the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs revealed plans to increase the pet industry to 15 trillion won ($11.47 billion) by 2027, up from last year's 8 trillion won.
K-Pet Food, along with K-pop, K-content and more, represents the nation’s supreme soft-power exports central to its economic strategizing. Brand Korea is without question harmed by the country's distinct but marginal dog-eating culture, with many people alienated and upset by the practice as illustrated earlier this year when the U.S. borough of Palisades Park, New Jersey, rejected a proposed cultural-linguistic exchange program for South Korean students based upon the region’s reputation for dog meat.
Consensus as contest
Through this political dogfight, a consensus appears to be forming and will likely soon be drawn up into laws forbidding dog meat consumption. What the debate reveals is that changing norms requires difficult conversations, the kinds of conversations that an increasingly multicultural Korea needs. In this case, the questions ask us to consider what it means to be human or humane.
Back at Namdaemun Market, a lone little dog yelps amid the market buzz. It's a small well-manicured white dog in the arms of a woman. She's eating a rice cake skewer. Later, the dog is heard again. The woman kisses her pet while waiting for a fried dough snack called “hotteok.”