“It’s a dying business,” Gong In-young said yesterday as he watched US activists clear out the cages of the South Korean dog meat farm he has been running for the past decade.
Close to 200 dogs, including golden retrievers, Siberian huskies, rottweilers, Japanese tosas and Korean jindo dogs, paced in circles inside the small wire cages, barking furiously at their rescuers.
The dogs in Gong’s farm, one of thousands across the country, were bred specifically for consumption and confined in their cages from birth until slaughtered for their meat.
South Koreans are believed to consume somewhere between 1.5 million and 2.5 million dogs every year, but the meat farming industry is in decline, with little demand among the younger generation.
Gong’s business is the fifth and the largest dog meat farm to be closed down by the US-based Humane Society International (HSI), and Gong said he was happy to get out.
“In the past, people ate dogs because there was nothing else to eat, but nowadays, young people don’t have to eat it,” Gong said.
“It’s becoming weird for people,” he added.
A poll conducted by Gallup Korea last year showed that only 20 percent of men in their 20s consumed dog meat in the past year, compared with half of those in their 50s and 60s.
Gong also said that the increasing popularity of dogs as domestic pets had played a large part in reducing demand for their meat.
The HSI rescued a total of 225 dogs last year, closing down four farms in what they call a “constructive and collaborative” approach to phase out an industry that has long been criticized by international animal welfare groups.
Most of the dogs are flown to the US and Canada for adoption.
In return for shuttering his business for good, a farmer receives up to US$60,000 — depending on the number of dogs being bred — that can be used as seed money for a more “humane” farm, growing anything from blueberries to green peppers.
Through its well-publicized rescues, HSI seeks to raise awareness about the cruelty of dog meat farms and “initiate a conversation with South Korean policymakers,” HSI campaign manager Andrew Plumbly said.
South Korea is preparing to host the 2018 Winter Olympics, and Plumbly said the global publicity surrounding the event provided an opportunity to push for change.
“Part of the spotlight will touch on the dog meat trade, so they may feel pressure in that regard and hopefully they will respond constructively,” he said.
Gong, who stumbled into the dog meat industry after many failed business attempts, admits he was “never proud” of his farm, which only ever earned him a modest living. In a normal year, he would sell about 200 animals, with an average price of about US$200.
“I realized the dogs will become a lot happier if I changed my mind,” Gong said.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Committee is to gather in July for a key meeting known as a plenum, the third since the body of elite decisionmakers was elected in 2022, focusing on reforms amid “challenges” at home and complexities broad. Plenums are important events on China’s political calendar that require the attendance of all of the Central Committee, comprising 205 members and 171 alternate members with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at the helm. The Central Committee typically holds seven plenums between party congresses, which are held once every five years. The current central committee members were elected at the