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South Korea’s parliament on Tuesday passed a law banning the breeding and slaughter of dogs for eating, as well as the trade in their meat. The ban will be preceded by a three-year transition period: it will come into full force in 2027. The consumption of dog meat is in decline in the country and is increasingly less frequent among young people, and in recent years numerous proposals have been presented to ban it, but they had always faced strong opposition from farmers’ groups.
The bill was approved by the National Assembly, South Korea’s unicameral parliament, with 208 votes in favor and none against. To fully come into force it will have to be approved by the government and signed by the president: in this case it is considered a purely formal step, given that both are in favor of the ban. The law will provide for penalties of up to three years in prison or fines of around 20 thousand euros for violators.
In the country, dog meat is traditionally considered an invigorating food, and is still consumed mainly in the hottest summer months, July and August. Today it is almost exclusively eaten by people over 50. Consumption has dropped in recent years, due to the greater diffusion of dogs as pets which has created greater sensitivity around the issue, especially among young people. In particular, the methods of killing dogs are highly criticized by activists and a large part of the population.
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Dog meat has been eaten in South Korea for centuries. It was an important food source in times of food scarcity – particularly during the Japanese occupation (between 1910 and 1945) and the Korean War (between 1950 and 1953) – and continued to be consumed even after the end of the conflicts. In the past, dogs could be bred easily and there were many more of them than, for example, cattle, which instead were mainly used to pull carts or plow fields.
Between dishes the most popular are boshintang – a boiled meat soup considered invigorating – and gaesoju, a drink obtained by boiling dog meat together with various herbs. It is estimated that every year they come to South Korea to make these recipes bred around two and a half million dogs, often in conditions described as terrible: mostly they are phone and Korean Mastiffs, but there are also Jindo and crossbreeding, to which are added purebred dogs that are abandoned by their owners and then introduced into breeding farms.
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According to data from the South Korean Ministry of Agriculture, there are approximately 1,100 breeding farms in the country, where 570,000 dogs are raised. There are 1,600 restaurants that serve dog meat. The law approved on Tuesday also provides compensation and benefits for farmers to help them change their business. It also obliges farmers, butchers and traders who work with dog meat to present local administrations with a transition plan to be implemented by 2027.
Both the current president of South Korea, Yoon Suk-yeol (center-right), and his predecessor, Moon Jae-in (center-left), are animal lovers and have adopted several dogs. Already in 2021 Moon had said he wanted to ban the consumption of dog meat, but then nothing was done about the proposal.
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