Report: North Korea Seizing Pet Dogs To Combat Food Shortage
A new report says North Korea is rounding up pet dogs amid food shortages that are impacting the country.
In June, Tomas Ojea Quintana, U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea, warned of “widespread food shortages and malnutrition” due to a months-long border closure with China and measures to limit the coronavirus, according to Reuters.
“An increasing number of families eat only twice a day, or eat only corn, and some are starving,” he said in a statement.
The Chosun Ilbo, a South Korean newspaper, said North Korean leader Kim Jong Un placed a ban on pet ownership in July, calling it “decadence” and “a ‘tainted’ trend by bourgeois ideology.”
But that’s not the real game, the report said, indicating the dogs are being killed to address food issues.
“Authorities have identified households with pet dogs and are forcing them to give them up or forcefully confiscating them and putting them down,” the newspaper quoted an unidentified source as saying.
Some dogs are sold to dog meat restaurants, the source said.
Pet owners are “cursing Kim Jong Un behind his back” but can’t do much about the practice, the source said.
Unlike in the United States, where pets are everywhere, pet dogs are rare in North Korea, the report said.
“Ordinary people raise pigs and livestock on their porches, but high-ranking officials and the wealthy own pet dogs, which stoked some resentment,” the report’s source is quoted as saying.
The new report runs in the same vein as one from July published in the Daily NK.
“The authorities have ordered that officials in several areas of the country, including Pakchon County, buy up dogs weighing 15 kilograms or larger and send them to Pyongyang,” the Daily NK quoted a source it did not name as saying.
The source said dog meat is to be supplied to 36 specific restaurants.
“The government didn’t pay for the dogs with cash,” the Daily NK quoted its source as saying. “Local party officials promised they would pay the dog owners with a certificate guaranteeing them rice or Chinese-made [cooking] oil by Oct. 10.”
The source said dog owners complied “because they thought it would be better than selling the dogs to local restaurants at low prices.”
Twitter was revolted at the new report.
Please .@realDonaldTrump can you do anything to stop THIS? #NorthKorea is going to confiscate people’s beloved pets to eat because they say they are running out of food. Can you contact him & help with their food supply & save people’s pets. This is wrong!https://t.co/4DFQdouXzg
— Prancer530 (@PrancerPaw) August 18, 2020
It would appear the latest victims of communism are dogs…
The government is stealing people’s dogs to turn them into meat for food.
Bloomin North Koreans and their ‘bourgeois’ pet dogs, such ‘capitalist decadence’. Tut tut. #NorthKorea @peta
https://t.co/uXFoXMyi3p— Jamie Lawson (@JamieLawson1001) August 17, 2020
Fatso Kim Dum Kong is PURE EVIL !!! ??????? #NorthKorea
Kim Jong Un orders pet dogs to be confiscated in North Korean capital https://t.co/3IIEPjLHIE via @nypost
— Colleen Shea ☘ (@blueshamrock84) August 17, 2020
In its reporting about the forced dog collection, the Brussels Times explained why the policy makes sense from a North Korean standpoint.
“By confiscating the dogs, Kim Jong Un hits two birds with one stone: He destroys a live symbol for economic inequality and simultaneously contributes to solving the food crisis,” the newspaper reported.
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