‘I was a dog meat farmer and used to be proud of my job’

Tucked between rolling hills and towering trees, Yang’s farm in South Korea doesn’t look like anything special.

Like most ranches, hay has been squished into the ground by his heavy workboots – but there has never been the sound of steady lowing from the fields or squawks from the henhouse.

Instead, until recently, it was just the noise of harrowing barks that could be heard coming out of the rows and rows of steel cages that line the farm.

For 30 years, Yang, who wished only to be known by his surname, ran a dog meat farm near Asan, a city in the South Chungcheong province.

Before then, the 73-year-old was behind the wheels of large trucks zipping along the Gyeongbu Expressway. ‘But I grew tired of that life,’ he tells Metro.co.uk.

Yang had a dream in his 30s – to become a farmer. So in 1985, a few years before the South Korean Olympics, he decided to move out to the countryside and build a home and a farm from scratch.

‘Back then it seemed like a good business decision,’ Yang, from Namwon, North Jeolla, admits, ‘but in today’s Korea with things changing, it has no future and it was very exhausting work too.

A dog curled up in the corner of a cage filled with excrement on a dog meat farm in Asan, South Korea – and this good boy is certainly not alone (Picture: Jean Chung)

Yang bred dogs for their meat for more than three decades, a decision he didn’t think much about at first has come to deeply regret (Picture: Jean Chung)

Yang and his wife raised the dogs (Picture: Jean Chung)

Mia was among the dogs found locked up at a dog meat farm (Picture: Jean Chung)

Yang had long dreamt of starting a cattle ranch but ended up breeding canines instead (Picture: Jean Chung)

Over the past year, nine out of 10 Koreans haven’t eaten dog meat and have no plans to do so, a recent survey suggested. Half found the idea ’emotionally repulsive’.

Yet despite these statistics, some 5,174,000 Koreans season, steam, slice, simmer and serve up dog meat dishes such as bosintang, a soup known for its supposed reinvigorating properties.

For Yang, it meant money to keep a roof over his and his wife’s heads.

After quitting his job and attracting a few stray dogs to get started over the next few years, he began to breed his ‘livestock’, as the law sees dogs.

His routine was simple. Every morning and evening, having obtained a permit from the local government, Yang travelled to local schools and restaurants to collect food scraps to feed the animals.

An estimated 6,000 dogs were killed for their meat over the next 30 years, with traders taking the canines to slaughterhouses to electrocute them to death before selling them off to local markets, restaurants and dog meat auction houses.

In 2020, the price of 600g of raw dog meat was approximately 6,600 Korean won (roughly £4).

‘I used to feel proud and happy as a dog farmer. No one challenged what I was doing,’ Yang says.

Eating dog meat isn’t common in South Korea, with most in the country vowing to never consume it (Picture: Jean Chung)

Campaigners from Humane Society International/Korea have spent nearly a decade working and supporting farmers swapping to new livelihoods (Picture: Jean Chung)

Hundreds of dogs destined for slaughterhouses were saved (Picture: Jean Chung)

The makeshift pens for the dogs have since been torn down (Picture: Jean Chung)

‘But then about four years ago I realised there is no longer any future in dog meat because people don’t want to eat it anymore and public opinion has become very negative. That made me feel guilty.’

In March last year, Yang’s dog meat ranch became the 18th in South Korea to close its doors for good and 200 dogs and puppies were saved.

He struck a deal with Humane Society International (HSI), an animal-rights group which has spent years reaching out to farmhands like Yang who want to leave the dog meat industry but don’t have the means to do so.

HSI has each dog meat wrangler sign contracts to permanently shutter the farm and give their dogs up and transition to a new livelihood, such as medicinal herb or water parsley farming.

When HSI’s South Korean dog meat lead, Sandkyung Lee, visited Yang’s farm, he helped free the dogs from cages thick with faeces that provided little protection from the country’s sweltering summers or bitter winters.

Many of the animals were suffering from malnutrition and painful skin and eye diseases.

‘They were fed a disgusting slop made of restaurant waste that farmer Yang brought from nearby businesses,’ Sandkyung tells Metro.co.uk.

Some of the dogs were puppies (Picture: Jean Chung)

Mia is now in the US and up for adoption (Picture: Jean Chung)

Yang now grows crops (Picture: Jean Chung)

‘Most were caged with other dogs who would compete for both food and space, and their injuries would go untreated. Some puppies couldn’t survive the terrible living conditions and Yang allowed mother dogs to eat their puppies.

‘It will have been a physically and mentally traumatic environment for the dogs, and the legacy of that can take a lot of rehabilitation work to undo.’

Two of the saved dogs were pregnant and now their 27 puppies once destined to be served on a dinner plate are awaiting homes in the US.

Boarding flights on December 15 from Seoul, mother dogs Raspberry and Zelda were joined by their now grown pups: Wen, Max, Trudy, Bumblebee, Zoey, Zinna, Brooks, Bruno, Brown Bear, Katherine, Leo, Lion, Ace, Mia, Maci, Parker, Patrick, Paul, Peter, Pablo, Pam, Nana, Nadia, Corbin, Covy and Chico.

The big families were taken to a care and rehabilitation centre operated by HSI and the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) in Hagerstown, Maryland, and will be moved to shelters where, one day, they’ll be taken in by loving families.

Since 2015, HSI/Korea has rescued more than 2,500 dogs and flown them to the US, Canada, the UK and the Netherlands to find homes, with a number rehomed in South Korea.

The former truck driver sells the vegetables to local markets and grocers (Picture: Jean Chung)

The farmhand says his life has changed for the better, no longer seeing some canines as ‘meat dogs’ (Picture: Jean Chung)

Sangkyung Lee, of HSI Korea, says the history of consuming dogs for their meat is a complicated one for South Korea (Picture: Jean Chung)

‘The origin of eating dog meat is controversial,’ says Sangkyung, adding that the ‘notion’ of it being a national dish of the country is hard to shake off despite it being a far cry from reality.

‘Although it is said that dog meat was consumed in the past when other food sources were scarce such as during the Korean War, its consumption has never been mainstream in South Korea.’

Although once legal but heavily restricted in South Korea, an increasing number of people are turning their noses up at the country’s centuries-old appetite for it.

Indeed, in 1998, there were a total of 6,484 restaurants selling dog meat, with an average of 25 tons sold per day.

‘As of February 2022, the number of dog-breeding farms is approximately 1,100,’ Seung-ho Choi, a spokesperson for the South Korean Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, tells Metro.co.uk. ‘The number of dogs being bred for meat consumption is approximately 500,000.’

Sangkyung says eating dog meat has never been ‘mainstream’ (Picture: Jean Chung)

Some people who eat dog meat, campaigners say, see the pups they eat and the pups they pet almost as two separate species (Picture: Jean Chung)

Twenty-seven dogs were flown out to the US last month (Picture: Kelly Donithan)

South Koreans have their reasons for eating dog meat. Some believe it can relieve the sticky heat the country knows all too well, where folk medicine shops mix it with ginger or jujube to make a tonic known as gaesoju.

Others, see dogs there to be petted differently than those there to be butchered.

‘What’s unique in Korea is that it’s “meat dog” versus “pet dog”,’ Nami Kim, the founder of Save Korean Dogs, tells Metro.co.uk. ‘The elderly have an idea that what I eat is a meat dog born to be cooked, my pet dog at home is to be loved by me.’

But dog meat dishes will be taken off menus for good after South Korean lawmakers recently voted to ban the trade in a 208-0 vote.

Slaughtering a dog for consumption will be punishable by up to three years in prison or a fine of up to 30 million won (£18,000), with dog meat traders receiving government support to shut down by 2027.

HSI has flown countless freed canines to other countries to rehome them (Picture: Kelly Donithan)

One of the dogs inside the care centre, where they are all receiving love and veterinary treatment (Picture: Humane Society International)

More dogs will likely be freed in the coming years after South Korea’s parliament, the National Assembly, voted to abolish the dog meat trade by 2027 (Picture: Humane Society International)

However, eating dog meat has not been outlawed and dogs are still considered livestock, says Nami.

‘The meat trader leaders may find the three years probation enough to go underground instead of going for an alternative livelihood,’ she warns.

For Sangkyung, the law means one thing – the end of the ‘terrible concept of eating our companion animals’.

‘The misery these dogs experience is really no different from that of pigs,cows and chickens and none of these beautiful animals deserve such suffering just for our meal,’ he adds.

While the new legislation has been welcomed by some groups, industry leaders were not happy about the law’s passing.

Campaigners have poked holes in the new law, however (Picture: Jean Chung)

The Korea Dog Meat Farmers’ Association, an industry group Yang was once a member of that has long challenged anti-dog laws, says the ‘evil’ legislation threatens workers ‘right to survive’ and infringes on people’s ‘freedom’, the Financial News, a South Korean newspaper, reported.

Meanwhile, protests and appeals are planned by dog meat leaders, including releasing some 2,000,000 dogs in front of president Yoon Suk Yeol’s office.

Away from the demonstrations in the streets and debates in parliament, Yang continues to get up each day to work on his new farm.

Having used the HSI/Korea grant to tear down the dog kennels, leafy greens now line his 500-metre land and sells sweet potatoes, watermelon, peppers, perilla seeds, and runner beans to local grocers in town.

‘To me, I had always viewed the dogs just as a source of my income, as an animal for meat,’ he says.

‘But while working with HSI/Korea, I saw how they treated the dogs as kindly as other human beings, like their family members who they genuinely loved, and I learned a lot.’

Now, Yang no longer hears the caged canines’ cries and yelps but the rustling of leaves as the wind blows through the cabbage patches he proudly planted.

‘I think many dog farmers want to close if they have the right kind of support,’ he adds.

‘My attitude towards animals has changed – and my life has changed for the better too.’

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.

For more stories like this, check our news page.