BBC Information
When he is not preaching the phrase of God, Reverend Joo Yeong-bong is elevating canine for slaughter.
Enterprise isn’t going nicely although. In reality, it is getting ready to changing into unlawful.
“Since final summer time we have been attempting to promote our canine, however the merchants simply hold hesitating,” Mr Joo, 60, tells the BBC. “Not a single one has proven up.”
In 2024, the South Korean authorities applied a nationwide ban on the sale of canine meat for consumption. The landmark laws, which was handed final January, provides farmers like Mr Joo till February 2027 to shutter their operations and unload their remaining animals.
However many say that is not sufficient time to section out an trade which has propped up livelihoods for generations – and that authorities nonetheless have not give you ample safeguards for farmers or the estimated half one million canine in captivity.
Even those that help the ban, together with consultants and animal rights advocates, have flagged points round its enforcement – together with the issue of rehoming canine that, having been saved from the kill ground, now face the more and more doubtless menace of euthanasia.
News1Halfway via the grace interval, canine farmers are discovering themselves with a whole bunch of just about unsellable animals, farms that may’t be closed, and little technique of placing meals on the desk.
“Individuals are struggling,” says Mr Joo, who can also be president of the Korean Affiliation of Edible Canines, a gaggle representing the trade. “We’re drowning in debt, cannot pay it off, and a few cannot even… discover new work.
“It is a hopeless scenario.”
A storm of obstacles
Chan-woo has 18 months to eliminate 600 canine.
After that, the 33-year-old meat farmer – who we agreed to anonymise for concern of backlash – faces a penalty of as much as two years in jail.
“Realistically, even simply on my farm, I am unable to course of the variety of canine I’ve in that point,” he says. “At this level I’ve invested all of my property [into the farm] – and but they don’t seem to be even taking the canine.”
By “they”, Chan-woo would not simply imply the merchants and butchers who, previous to the ban, would purchase a median of half a dozen canine per week.
He is additionally referring to the animal rights activists and authorities who in his view, having fought so laborious to outlaw the canine meat commerce, don’t have any clear plan for what to do with the leftover animals – of which there are near 500,000, based on authorities estimates.
“They [the authorities] handed the regulation with none actual plan, and now they’re saying they cannot even take the canine.”
Hyunjung Kim/BBC InformationLee Sangkyung, a marketing campaign supervisor at Humane World for Animals Korea (Hwak), echoes these issues.
“Though the canine meat ban has handed, each the federal government and civic teams are nonetheless grappling with easy methods to rescue the remaining canine,” he says. “One space that also feels missing is the dialogue across the canine which have been left behind.”
A spokesperson from the Ministry of Agriculture, Meals and Rural Affairs (Mafra) advised the BBC that if farm house owners gave up their canine, native governments would assume possession and handle them in shelters.
Rehoming them, nonetheless, has confirmed difficult.
Since weight equals revenue within the canine meat trade, farms are inclined to favour bigger breeds. However in South Korea’s extremely urbanised society, the place many individuals stay in condo complexes, aspiring pet house owners typically need the alternative.
There may be additionally a social stigma related to canine that come from meat farms, Mr Lee explains, as a consequence of issues of illness and trauma. The difficulty is additional sophisticated by the truth that many are both pure or blended tosa-inu, a breed that’s categorised as “harmful” in South Korea and requires authorities approval to maintain as a pet.
In the meantime, rescue shelters are already overcrowded.
This good storm of obstacles factors to a perverse irony: that numerous so-called rescue canine, with nowhere else to go, now face the prospect of being euthanised.
Hyunjung Kim/BBC Information“It is simply unbelievable,” says Chan-woo.
“Because the regulation was made based on the calls for of those teams, I assumed that they had additionally labored out an answer for the canine – like they might take duty for them. However now I hear that even the animal rights teams say euthanasia is the one choice.”
Cho Hee-kyung, head of the Korean Animal Welfare Affiliation, conceded in September 2024 that whereas rights teams would attempt to rescue as many animals as potential, there would “be canine left over”.
“If remaining canine develop into ‘misplaced and deserted animals’ then it is heartbreaking however they are going to be euthanised,” she stated.
The federal government sought to mood these issues weeks later, saying that euthanising animals was “actually” not a part of their plan.
Extra just lately, Mafra advised the BBC it was investing about 6bn Korean gained ($4.3m; £3.2m) yearly to develop animal shelters and help personal amenities, and would supply as much as 600,000 Korean gained per canine ($450; £324) to farmers who shut their companies early.
Hyunjung Kim/BBC InformationHowever Chun Myung-Solar, director of the Workplace of Veterinary Medical Training at Seoul Nationwide College, agrees that the federal government’s broader plan for leftover canine is basically missing.
“There must be a concrete dialogue about easy methods to ‘dispose’ of the canine,” she says.
“Each adoption and euthanasia needs to be on the desk. [But] if we have gone to the hassle of rescuing canine from merciless slaughter solely to euthanise them, it is comprehensible that folks would really feel heartbroken and indignant.”
A livelihood unravels
Some have seemed for options additional afield, sending the animals abroad to extra keen adopters in international locations like Canada, United Kingdom and america.
In 2023, a staff from Hwak rescued some 200 canine from a farm in Asan metropolis – all of which have since been despatched to Canada and the US.
The previous proprietor of that farm, 74-year-old Yang Jong-tae, advised the BBC that as he watched the rescuers loading his canine into their vehicles, he was astonished by the extent of compassion they confirmed.
“Once I noticed how they dealt with the animals – like they have been dealing with individuals, so gently and lovingly – it actually moved me,” he stated.
“We do not deal with them like that. For us, elevating canine was only a approach to make a dwelling. However these individuals from the animal group handled the canine like they have been people with dignity, and that basically touched my coronary heart.”
Hyunjung Kim/BBC InformationMr Yang hastened so as to add, nonetheless, that he disapproves of the ban on canine meat farming.
“If canine meat is banned as a result of canine are animals, then why is it okay to eat different animals like cows, pigs or hen?” he stated. “It is the identical factor. This stuff exist in nature for individuals to stay on.”
Consuming canine isn’t the identical as consuming different meats, based on Ms Chun. She factors out that canine meat carries extra threat from a meals security and hygiene perspective – particularly in South Korea, the place it has not been built-in into the formal, regulated meat manufacturing system.
And whereas consumption charges have fluctuated all through Korea’s historical past, it has develop into more and more taboo lately.
A authorities ballot from 2024 discovered solely 8% of respondents stated that they had tried canine meat within the earlier 12 months – down from 27% in 2015. About 7% stated they might hold consuming it up till February 2027, and about 3.3% stated they might proceed after the ban got here into full impact.
In the meantime, as of June 2025, 623 of South Korea’s 1,537 canine farms had closed.
“As society and tradition have advanced, South Korean society has now made the choice to cease producing canine meat,” Ms Chun says.
Hyunjung Kim/BBC InformationAnd but for a lot of it stays the cornerstone of an trade on which they’ve constructed their lives.
Each member of the canine meat commerce the BBC spoke to expressed uncertainty about how they might help themselves now that their longtime livelihood has been deemed unlawful.
Some say they’ve resigned themselves to lives of poverty, noting that they have been born throughout the Korean Warfare and knew easy methods to stay hungry. Others advised that the commerce might go underground.
Many agree, nonetheless, that for youthful farmers the crackdown is especially worrying.
“Younger individuals on this trade are actually going through a bleak actuality,” Mr Joo says. “Since they cannot promote the canine, they cannot shut down shortly both. They’re caught, with no approach ahead or again.”
Chan-woo remembers that when he began working within the trade a decade in the past, at 23, “The notion of canine meat wasn’t that unfavorable”.
“Nonetheless,” he provides, “There have been some feedback from individuals round me, so even again then I used to be conscious that it wasn’t one thing I might do for the remainder of my life.”
The ban got here faster than he anticipated – and since its announcement, he says, “Making a dwelling has develop into extremely unsure”.
“All we’re hoping for now’s that the grace interval might be prolonged in order that the method [of dealing with the remaining dogs] can occur extra progressively.”
Many others are hoping for a similar. However because the canine meat trade is pulled out from underneath the toes of those that’ve come to depend on it, Mr Joo can not help however speculate on a grim thought: that some farmers could not be capable to endure the uncertainty for for much longer.
“Proper now, individuals are nonetheless holding on, hoping one thing would possibly change – perhaps the grace interval might be prolonged,” he says. “However by 2027, I actually imagine one thing horrible will occur.
“There are such a lot of individuals whose lives have utterly unravelled.”
