At the beginning of 2024, the South Korean National Assembly passed an extremely powerful draft, the general content of which is not to eat dog meat!
The draft law, entitled "Special Law on the Prohibition of the Breeding, Slaughtering and Distribution of Dogs for Food", prohibits the breeding, breeding and slaughtering of dogs for food, as well as the distribution and sale of dogs and processed dog meat.
Violations of the law can result in a range of penalties, ranging from fines to jail time. The penalty clause will come into effect from 2027, with a three-year transition period.
The most shocking thing is that this draft was adopted by 208 votes to 0, without a single vote against it!
The scene of the draft voting (Photo: M.)newspim.com）▼
People who don't know much about Korean folklore or Korean folklore may think that this matter is not worth mentioning at all. However, for those who know a little about the Korean Peninsula, this news is undoubtedly a thunderstorm.
On the Korean Peninsula, it has been customary to eat dog meat since ancient times, and it is even proud to eat dog meat, and there are many kinds of tricks. The status of dog meat also has a place on the peninsula, after all, the term "fragrant meat" also refers to dog meat on the peninsula.
In 2019, a dog meat stall in a vegetable market in South Korea.
Photo: Shutterstock).
It can be said that to a certain extent, dog meat is one of the spiritual symbols of the Korean Peninsula, and even South Koreans look down on dog meat in Yulin, Guangxi, China.
Now, Koreans are going to completely abolish eating dog meat!
Environmental factors. The earliest evidence of the history of dog meat consumption in the Korean Peninsula can be traced back to dog bones from the Neolithic site of Changnyeong-gun, Gyeongsangnam-do, at the southern tip of the Korean Peninsula, thousands of years ago.
However, these thousands of years of history are still not complete, because in the Neolithic Age, an environment with extremely backward production levels, humans could eat everything, and archaeological evidence is difficult to use as a marker of cultural formation.
The historical relics that can really be regarded as the era of civilization have to start from the Three Kingdoms period of Korea. A tomb mural was found in South Hwanghae Province, in the western part of present-day Xian, which depicted a dog that had been slaughtered in a warehouse. This is arguably the earliest documented record of the Shinshi period on the Korean Peninsula, and now this burial site has been packaged with many burial sites of the same period as the first World Cultural Heritage Site in North Korea, and has important documentary value.
This ancient custom of eating dog meat may be inseparable from the agricultural environment of ancient Korea. The mountainous Korean Peninsula, where most of its land is not suitable for cultivation and development of agriculture, is very limited in the amount of land that can be effectively cultivated, coupled with the harsher conditions of the natural environment, climate, soil, etc., under the old agricultural level, most of the inhabitants of the peninsula rely on only land crops for a living, not to mention the development of a large number of animal husbandry to consume high protein.
Three thousand miles of rivers and mountains", there are many mountains (only for illustration).
But for humans, in addition to the constraints of religious beliefs, most people still have a desire for animal protein and high fat contained in meat. However, at that time, the people who could eat normal farmed meat were either rich or expensive, and the rest of the class could only think of getting meat from other places.
Among the many meats, cattle are used as production tools, and horses are strategic resources, and they will not be eaten until they have to; Pigs, sheep, chickens and other normal meats need to be bred to obtain; From this, dogs became an option. Of course, since pigs, cattle and sheep can't afford to keep them, these selected dogs are not domestic dogs, most of them are ownerless wild dogs.
It is precisely because dog eating in ancient Korea was not a large-scale breeding model, and eating dog meat is easy to become a cultural stain in the West, and some scholars on the peninsula do not agree that eating dog meat is a traditional Korean culture. They believe that these are just scattered phenomena in a long history, and that they are far removed from the Korean national tradition.
Then, based on the historical materials of the Joseon Dynasty in the 18th century, some scholars believe that the large-scale consumption of dog meat began at the beginning of the founding of the Joseon Dynasty, and its source came from China in the west.
Even in the circumstances of the time, the consumption of dog meat was often exclusive to the underprivileged population, who needed to supplement with scarce protein. At this time, the attitude of ** is intriguing, they encourage the Baiding class to eat dog meat, on the one hand, to solve the problem of famine, and on the other hand, to eliminate wild dogs.
At that time, some of the North Korean scholars believed that dogs should be treated as human companions, not food. Therefore, although their opinions were not finally translated into policy, dog meat was never found at the banquet of the scholars. It is this choice of court culture that makes some scholars on the peninsula firmly deny that this is the "traditional food culture" of the peninsula.
At the end of the 19th century, a meal
However, the elegant culture has a moral advantage, while the popular culture has a numerical advantage. When the Korean Peninsula entered the modern society, the right to speak was gradually decentralized from the aristocracy, and the "non-mainstream" eating habits of the Baiding became the "mainstream".
How to eat dog meat.
When it comes to the most traditional way to eat dog meat on the peninsula, of course, it is tonic soup (in fact, it is the nickname of dog meat soup). It is a soup made with dog meat cooked with white soda and corn and eaten in the middle of the dog days. In fact, this dish has many names in Korean, and tonic soup is just one of them, and there are other dishes such as nutritious soup, four seasons soup, and ground sheep soup.
According to common sense, why should dog meat, which is usually eaten in winter, continue to be eaten during very hot dog days? This is because according to the traditional "health theory", it is necessary to regulate the "qi" in the human body to maintain good health, and in summer, the human body tends to sweat more, so it is necessary to use dog meat to increase body temperature and sweat more, in short, "heat to cure heat".
In fact, the ideas of the upper echelons of the Joseon Dynasty were not monolithic, some scholars did not agree to eat dog meat, and some scholars believed that the tonic soup was worth drinking based on folk experience.
Around 1816, Ding Hakyou, the second son of Ding Ruoyong, a famous practical thinker of the Joseon Dynasty, wrote a poem called "The Song of the Peasant Moon". This poem can be said to be an important part of the folk history of the peninsula, and it basically describes the various actions of the ordinary peasant families on the peninsula during the year. In the description of the eighth month of the lunar calendar, it tells the story of a married woman who visited her parents with boiled dog meat, rice cakes, and rice wine, from which it can be inferred that the popularity of tonic soup in those years can be inferred.
Koreans wear traditional costumes and follow the example of the ancients in farming.
Photo: Shutterstock).
In the 1849 book "Chronicles of the Eastern Kingdom" written by Peninsula scholar Hong Ximo, the recipe for the tonic soup was also mentioned, which included dog meat and chopped green onions.
At the same time, in this book, the author also cites the content of Sima Qian's "Historical Records", and traces the origin of this dish back to 616 BC (the third year of King Qing of Zhou), when dogs were used as sacrifices to drive away insect plagues. However, the "worm" in the "Historical Records" refers to the heart disease in the human heart, which is actually "Gu", and in the "East" book, the "worm" has become a creature such as locusts and pests that harm crops, which seems to be caused by the lack of knowledge on the Korean Peninsula.
The reason why it was necessary to stubbornly cling to Middle-earth was to express the Chinese nature of folk culture, which meant the authority of theory in North Korea at that time. Combined with the theory of yin and yang and the five elements that are also popular on the peninsula, dog meat is also a kind of "fire" that can restrain the autumn disease that represents "gold", which further proves the rationality of eating dog meat.
What the author may not have expected is that the classics created at that time to improve the legitimacy of dog meat have become a powerful force for Korean scholars to divide the culture of the peninsula from dog meat.
Dog meat is declining. The custom of dog meat, which has been circulating on the peninsula for so long, has been gradually declining in recent decades, especially in South Korea in the southern part of the peninsula.
After the Korean War, South Korea gradually became a developed country in the process of development one after another. In this series of processes, due to the close relationship with Europe and the United States, the values and culture of Europe and the United States have gradually penetrated into all aspects of South Korea, and with the gradual strengthening of the economy, South Korea has also produced the mentality of "leaving Asia and entering Europe" that Japan had in the past.
Westerners opposing the dog meat diet on the streets of South Korea in 2017.
Photo: Sojoongjoins.com）▼
In addition, there are many non-governmental organizations in South Korea, and international animal activists have complained a lot about the indifference of traditional Koreans to the environment, and South Koreans have spontaneously regarded the custom of eating dog meat with a relationship with China as a rafter.
This ambivalence is evident in the fact that Koreans speak out about the Yulin Dog Meat Festival, saying that the Chinese Yulin Dog Meat Festival is not on the table at all, and on the other hand, they claim that this is because Guangxi dog food is far worse than Korean dog food, and Guangxi people don't know whether to eat it or not.
After all, the voice of the people will keep pace with the times and become policies and laws. In 1984, South Korea promulgated the "Comprehensive Measures to Prevent the Slaughter and Consumption of Dog Meat", but the rectification plan did not force the people to ban the consumption of dog meat, but required that the dog meat stalls opened in the downtown area and roadside must be relocated, which can be regarded as a city appearance rectification policy. But from the side, it can actually be seen that eating dog meat is no longer as fragrant as it used to be in the eyes of the high-level.
Korean media reviewed the report on dog meat in 1984.
Photo: imnewsimbc.com）▼
Since then, the boycott of dog meat has grown louder and stronger, and on three occasions it has made a global noise, during several international sporting events hosted by South Korea.
Perhaps the most impressive thing for foreigners is that on the eve of the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games, animal protection organizations in some European and American countries did not hesitate to threaten them to refuse to participate in the Seoul Summer Olympics and strongly demanded that South Korea ban dog meat. In the end, South Korea made a low-profile concession and renamed the long-standing "dog meat soup" to "nutritious soup" and "tonic soup", etc., and the two sides each made a concession, so that the dog had no name in South Korea.
On the streets of London, England, 1989.
Animal activists who oppose the Korean dog meat diet.
Photo: Mhankookilbo.com）▼
During the 2002 World Cup in Japan and South Korea, there were also some animal protection groups that once again set off a wave of boycotts of eating dog meat, and even FIFA criticized it.
But this time the outside world forced it to be a little too fierce, Zheng Mengzhun, who was the chairman of the South Korean Organizing Committee of the Japan-South Korea World Cup Football Tournament, directly replied: "Eating dog meat, what does it matter to FIFA!" ", and further clarified that the issue of eating dog meat is South Korea's own affair and is not under the jurisdiction of FIFA. This response was immediately echoed by the public from all walks of life in South Korea.
Following FIFA's attack, the world's ** has participated in the debate, including the Associated Press, AFP, BBC and other well-known **, most of which have criticized South Korea's "dog meat culture". Later, South Korea responded by introducing more effective measures to prevent animal cruelty. During this period, many dog meat restaurants were forced to close, and the remaining dog meat restaurants in Seoul had to be moved off the main streets and renamed as "Bao Sei Yu Restaurant" or "Four Seasons Soup Restaurant".
A "tonic soup" restaurant in an alley in Seoul.
Photo: news1kr）▼
Since then, the boycott of dog meat has intensified. On July 20, 2006, some citizens launched a demonstration of "tonic soup" in Gwanghwamun. Later, a "dog meat festival" originally planned to be held on July 1, 2011 at the Peony Market in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, was also boycotted and had to be canceled.
On the eve of the 2018 Winter Olympics, South Korea closed its largest dog meat market. At the same time, in order to improve the surrounding environment of the Winter Olympics, Gangwon Province and Pyeongchang County**, where the event will be held, encourage restaurants selling dog broth to remove billboards and change menus, and provide 10 million won of financial support to eligible businesses, and restaurants that change their menus can receive up to 20 million won of financial support from Gangwon Province and Pyeongchang County**.
Since October 2019, Seoul has completely stopped slaughtering dogs.
Above: South Koreans marching against eating.
Below: Koreans who are about to eat, try it
With the development of a series of ** orientations, not eating dog meat has slowly evolved into a fashion among young Koreans, because eating dog meat has been regarded as barbaric behavior in South Korea in general**.
Nowadays, every time there is a "dog day", most of the people who take tonic in the "Bao Bao Tang House" are middle-aged and elderly people. If young people are suspected of being in or out of it, most of them will deny it.
Elderly Korean diners eating at a restaurant selling dog meat.
Photo: seafoodcurrycom）▼
Young people in South Korea basically don't eat dog meat now, and after 2027, it will be difficult for even the elderly to eat dog meat.
However, the story of what happened in the southern part of the Korean Peninsula did not spill over into other ethnic Korean settlements. Koreans in North Korea, Northeast China, and Central Asia still retain the traditional custom of eating dog meat.
Reference: Wang Yuantao. How Koreans deal with "refusal to eat dog meat" [J].See the World, 2014, 000(013):p84-84.
Liang Yan. The whale has a big mouth, the Japanese have a bigger appetite, the dog soup is fragrant, and the Korean people are full of embarrassment[J].China Animal Health, 2001(11):44-45
The content of this article is provided by the author and does not necessarily represent the position of the Earth Knowledge Bureau
Cover**: Shutterstock
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