Tips On Campaigning For Non-Koreans

PLEASE TAKE INTO CONSIDERATION THE FOLLOWING IF YOU ARE PLANNING US TO HELP US STOP THE KOREAN GOVERNMENT FROM LEGALIZING DOG MEAT IN KOREA.

The government will invariably say that it is complying with what local and overseas animal protection groups have requested to improve animal welfare.

However, in the past, the government has manipulated the idea of animal welfare as a means to achieve their real goal of legalizing dog meat.

It revised the Animal Protection Law, seeking to improve the animal welfare situation in Korea, but there was no discussion on the banning of dog meat

The government had claimed that the revision of the Animal Protection Law would improve the welfare of dogs and ensure that dogs would be slaughtered humanely. This did not happen.

Typically, only economic and political pressures appear to be able to shift the government's position on anything, not ethical concerns.

PLEASE ADVISE MEMBERS OF YOUR GROUPS TO CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING WHEN THEY SEND PETITIONS.

In the past, Western groups approached the dog meat issue in Korea from an animal welfare perspective. This argument was not successful because most Koreans do not view the issue in only these terms.

In the past, the dog meat lobby has taken some of the criticism of Westerners out of context and used it against our the anti-dog meat campaign in Korea.

Often they take key words used in campaigns and quote them out of context to provoke an emotional reaction in Korea, especially from hard line nationalists, turning people against foreigners, their views, and whatever issue happens to be at hand.

The terms barbaric, primitive, savage, and so on, should be avoided for this reason, no matter how appropriate they are. Such terms will only provide ammunition for the dog meat lobby.

The strategy dog meat supporters usually take is to say that Western critics are racists and that they are trashing Korean culture. Regrettably, they perceive dog meat eating as a tradition, and therefore as a part of Korean culture, which leads to the eating of dog meat getting mixed up with nationalism.

The irony is that despite their blind nationalism, they don't seem to understand how the shame of the dog meat industry is hurting Korea.

We hope this has helped you understand the intransigence and ignorance that KARA and other local animal protection groups are up against.

PLEASE NOTE

Oh, and if you really feel you have to use harsh language to address the issue, then allow us to forgive you in advance.

Current Situation Menu

Dog Meat Opinion Pieces

Few people seem to perceive fully as yet that the most far-reaching consequence of the establishment of the common origin of all species is ethical; that it logically involved a re-adjustment of altruistic morals by enlarging as a necessity of rightness the application of what has been called “The Golden Rule” beyond the area of mere mankind to that of the whole animal kingdom.

Thomas Hardy

They are not brethren; they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.

Henry Beston

The question is not, "Can they reason?" nor, "Can they talk?" but rather, "Can they suffer?

Jeremy Bentham

I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized.

Henry David Thoreau

If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favour freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are people who want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

Frederick Douglass

I know, in my soul, that to eat a creature who is raised to be eaten, and who never has a chance to be a real being, is unhealthy. It's like...you're just eating misery. You're eating a bitter life.

Alice Walker

As long as man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower living beings he will never know health or peace. For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love.

Pythagoras

Auschwitz begins wherever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: they're only animals.

Theodor Adorno

We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form.

William Ralph Inge

In their behavior toward creatures, all men are Nazis. Human beings see oppression vividly when they're the victims. Otherwise they victimize blindly and without a thought.

Isaac Bashevis Singer

All the arguments to prove man's superiority cannot shatter this hard fact: in suffering the animals are our equals.

Peter Singer

A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral.

Leo Tolstoy

The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.

Mahatma Gandhi

Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.

Thomas Edison

Animals are my friends... and I don't eat my friends.

George Bernard Shaw

The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man.

Charles Darwin

I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men.

Leonardo Da Vinci

Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.

Albert Einstein