As nations around the globe focus attention on World Cup soccer, the hosts in South Korea have been forced to fend off criticism for the practice of killing and eating dogs.
I am Korean-American, born in this country. Culturally, I embrace my heritage and our rich 5,000-year history, but, at the same time, I have always considered myself an American. As an American, I set out to learn what I could about this "cultural tradition." What I found is that it is anything but.
The cultural tradition myth was begun by those profiting from the trade. Between the end of World War II and the Korean War, when sustenance was scarce and, financially, the country was in dire straits, some people turned to eating their companion animals.
By 1980, dog-killing was on the wane, and the handful of dog-meat peddlers who were worried about losing their businesses quickly marketed the myth that dog-meat stew — boshing tang — is a traditional "cure all" health food that can also enhance male virility. Today, nearly 3 million dogs are killed for human consumption each year in South Korea, and the popularity of canine flesh is on the rise.
The dogs are raised on rural farms or in urban backyards and, like egg-laying hens in battery cage factory farms, spend their entire short lives in cramped wire cages where they routinely endure thirst, hunger, unsanitary conditions and outright physical abuse.
At open-air markets, they're dragged from their cages and deliberately tortured to death. Koreans bought into the notion that the more adrenaline in the animal's tissues just before slaughter, the more "potent" the pseudo-cure. So the dogs are hanged, beaten with pipes and hammers to "tenderize" their flesh and repeatedly electrocuted. Their bodies are blowtorched to remove fur, often while they're still alive.
It isn't legal, but regulations are not enforced.
I first learned about dog flesh eating in Korea on television during the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul. Even though I was still eating other species of animals then, before I became vegetarian, I was struck by the hypocrisy of the American media: It was quick to portray Koreans as barbarians for eating our revered and favorite companion animals, while in this country, more than 10 billion animals — who don't have the luxury of being seen as "pets" — are slaughtered every year for human consumption.
Nevertheless, I was riddled with many different emotions: embarrassment, outrage, frustration and disgust.
That same battery of emotions overcame me when I stood in front of the Korean Embassy in Washington three years ago and at the United Nations in Manhattan two years ago, protesting the dog-eating trade. We got incredible support from passers-by — much more than I had ever seen when standing in front of a slaughterhouse or factory farm advocating the rights of cows, chickens and pigs.
The thumbs-up and the shouts of support frustrated me because people were so outraged by the killing of "pets" but not "food" animals. They also encouraged me because I saw that the compassion was there. Now we need to widen the circle of compassion to include the not-so-cuddly animals. The ones with the unfamiliar faces, awkward walks and scaly bodies.
This issue has been called "difficult" and "touchy." But it is not a racial or a cultural issue. Exploitation is exploitation, no matter how desperately you try to hide it under the blood-soaked veils of religious tradition, cultural expression or ethnic pride.
We protest the running of the bulls in Spain not because we're prejudiced against Spaniards. We try to stop the slaughter of whales at the gun-toting hands of the Makah Indians not because we want to steal what's left of their culture.
We work to save the lives of chickens sacrificed in Santeria ceremonies not because we're opposed to their right to religious freedom. And, today, we're sickened by the horrors of the dog flesh trades in South Korea not because we look down on so-called Asian traditions.
We speak out — loudly, passionately and persistently — because animal cruelty crosses over any arbitrary divides of ethnicity or spiritual heritage. The animals, when they look pleadingly into the faces of their killers, don't see the shape of the person's face, the color of his skin or the slant of her eyes. They look with desperation, fear and the desire to stay alive — and search in vain to see some sign of hope that they may be spared.
We can stop this cruel industry. We can awaken the consciousness of the Korean people. We can make a difference, both for the millions of Korean dogs awaiting a slow and painful death and the billions of animals slaughtered for human consumption in our own country.
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