Last days of South Korea’s dog meat industry

A half dozen dogs have patchy fur and raw red skin. Several developed what looked like sarcoptic mange then seemed to have scratched and scratched at the parasites and developed bacterial infections.

The team starts treating the dogs for skin conditions and vaccinates all for rabies and other diseases. Although their water bowls (reused pots and pans) were once covered in green algae, they are now cleaned and filled daily by a caretaker, who also gives them kibble in place of the frozen, then thawed and ground-up half-rotten duck heads the man renting the farm had fed them.

These dogs are carried off the property Sept. 29 by Humane World for Animals rescuers. Then more than half of the dogs are flown to the U.S. for rehabilitation and adoption, with some going on to Canada. An additional 33 mothers and puppies will follow in spring next year.

Welcomed change in South Korea

The day after the vaccination mission, our Korea team holds a pop-up celebration in Seongsu, a neighborhood in Seoul often compared to Brooklyn, New York. It’s a “graduation” for the country and its dogs from the dog meat industry. On banners hanging outside, there’s an image of a happy dog wearing a mortar board. On the sidewalk, a graffiti artist paints a pug’s face. Inside an exhibit space, art students show their work inspired by the ban and get people to pose for pictures before an “end of cruelty” backdrop. 

Farther along the street, inside a coffee shop, Humane World staff hand out vegan wraps and patbingsu, shaved ice with red beans, which draw people into a photo exhibit of dogs adopted from our 29 dog meat farm and market rescues between 2015 and 2025. There’s a cartoon playing that shows the journey of a group of dogs on a meat farm to a better life.

Hyein Lee comes in with her husband and two of her three nearly adult sons for the oat milk bingsu. She is a vegan and cooks that way for her family. She remembers growing up anemic and how her mother served her a strange stew during Bok Nal. It smelled bad and she almost threw it up. It was dog meat.

“I think dogs and all kinds of animals are the same,” she says.

“We don’t need meat,” says her son, Eeheon Ryu. “The food mom makes is good enough.”

Jiyoung Kim, 33, comes in with her poodle. She’s happy for the ban. “Every dog is in my heart,” she says. “I want it to end immediately.” 

Up the street, Hayly Kang, who’s around Kim’s age, goes to get her photo taken with her friend and their Coton de Tuléar. Dog meat belongs to the past, she says. “[For] our generation, it’s like taboo.”

While Yakov Moon is from an earlier generation, he’s already moved on. He sits getting his arm painted with a picture of his 7-year-old shaggy-haired Sapsal, who he has named “Thirty-One,” for the area code around Seoul. He remembers when people ate dog because they were hungry and had nothing else, and how normal it seemed into the 1960s and 1970s. Not anymore.

The final few: Dog meat restaurants shutting down

A short taxi ride away, in Seoul’s Gyeongdong Market, it’s hard to find a dog meat restaurant. In 1998, there were 6,484 such restaurants in South Korea. In May, there were 2,352. Until recently, in this market alone, there were around 23.

Now there is just one.

The restaurant owner has spent the $1,000 of government compensation he received for the end of the dog meat industry on advertising. There is an LED sign and three display signs mounted on the building and, below, multiple vertical and horizontal banners showing black goats, which are native to South Korea and also eaten during Bok Nal. There are so many signs, you can barely see the entrance. But the owner, who’s been selling dog meat for 56 years and black goat for eight years, says all the advertising is not enough to keep his business going.

Karen E. Lange/Humane World for Animals

Signs advertising black goat plaster the entrance of one of the last dog meat restaurants in Seoul.

He says 80% of his customers want dog meat, not black goat, which is customarily eaten by women. And with so few dog meat farms left, the price has shot up and he has to pay for the meat in cash. He’s been forced to double his prices to cover the increased cost and has lost customers as a result.

As of Feb. 7, 2027, he will have to take it off the menu and try to survive selling black goat. He’s 79, and the sale of this restaurant was supposed to fund his retirement. It used to be full during Bok Nal, with a line of customers waiting. Now it’s two-thirds empty.

Two men in their 50s leave the old-style restaurant, descend the couple of steps that separate the dining room from the entryway. They put their shoes back on and carry their bagged leftovers into the street, where they light up cigarettes. They say maybe this is their last time gathering to eat dog meat. Another group of older men and women has just entered and ordered dog meat. The owner starts a pot of bosintang in the small, open kitchen near the street and slices up dog meat on a cutting board.

Nature takes back the farm

For years, this was the fate of the dogs on the Gangjin County farm. But not these last 71 dogs.

Karen E. Lange/Humane World for Animals

In the days before the September rescue, the farm, at the end of a country road, just beyond a rice paddy, is almost beautiful. In place of cries of terror and pain, there is the thrumming of cicadas. There are bees and dragonflies in flight and a black and yellow Joro spider spinning an abundant web. A long-tailed black butterfly alights on the edge of a container of stagnant water.

Where the rows of cages end, a white egret stands. Birds sing in the trees on the steep hillsides. Oriental magpies give raucous calls, flying back and forth, back and forth, to catch insects, the white stripes on their black wings flashing. These birds are omens of good fortune across Asia. In South Korea, they are symbols of the nation itself.

Nature is taking back this place of suffering as though to heal it.

No more dogs will die here. There is peace.