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Eating dogs - Korean culture? - by Yoon Kerr |
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Source: http://www.friendsofdogs.net
I have observed the tendency to justify the consumption of dog meat from a few area of British media. It puzzles me a great deal why they want to believe that eating dogs is a part of Korean culture. Their attitudes then stem from multiculturalism, which in turn probably stems from their guilt over their past imperialism.
No matter what is their true motive in their justification of the cruel and unjust practice, they do not do any services to either Koreans or Korean culture. Such a belief shows gross ignorance in Korean culture if anything and an insult to Korean culture, hence an insult to Koreans.
Any society has its share of cruel and undesirable practices in their past or even today. Let's assume hung, drawn, quarter was, as a way of execution, only practiced in a few countries including Britain. Do you believe that as a part of British culture, provided that culture is something worth keeping and to be proud of? Do you believe no foreigners, at the time such execution was practiced, should have protested to such a barbaric practice because it was no concern of theirs? Do you not care a bit when torture and murder practiced on a wide scale in another country?
It is a gross ignorance of Korean culture to regard the consumption of dogs as a part of Korean culture. It deliberately ignores many Koreans who find such a practice horrifying and something to be rid of. It also doesn't acknowledge the fact that eating dogs is a threat to Korean culture and violation of its essence. There is one underlying element which is very crucial to various aspects of Korean culture. That is reciprocity.
In no other culture, I have seen such emphasis upon the value of friendship. In no other culture, I have seen people loving their dogs as much as the dog loving Koreans do even as those who eat dogs want to justify their behaviour at the expense of true understanding of their own culture. This is why so many animal activists in Korea believe eating dogs is wrong. Such a belief reflects the true understanding of their own culture and genuine love towards their culture.
And yes, some practices can betray the essence of culture and that's the case with the consumption of companion animals in Korea. It is a sad fact but the fact does not justify the practice in the name of culture. On the contrary, to honour and protect animals who repay love with love and royalty is to understand and respect Korean culture in true sense. Those who try to justify Koreans eating dogs, Westerners or Koreans alike, do great disservice to Korean culture and Koreans.
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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
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