Have you ever eaten dog meat? Richard and I have not!

In Korea, the practice of eating dog meat still does exist. But how popular is it really? In our estimate, most Koreans prefer NOT to eat dog at this point. Korea has become modern very quickly, and even in the last five years living there we have noticed that more people around the country seem to be dog owners. Especially during the warmer months, it’s quite common at this point to see people out walking their dogs. By our observation, most dog owners prefer smaller sized dogs.

I found both myself and Richard having a better understanding of why some in Korea might still do this after discussing it before and during the filming. It seems more logical to understand why humans might eat dogs if you are in a place that doesn’t have a lot of protein. Beginning with the time around the Korean War and going back in time from there, I’ve read plenty on Korea being a place that was hard for most people to receive adequate protein. I read once how a family received a single egg and had a celebration because it was going to give them and their children the protein they needed for the day. Imagine that, 1 egg feeding an entire family.

This seems to be a subject that foreigners not from Korea are more interested in learning about than actual people eating dog meat. If you Google ‘dog meat in korea’, you come up with 22,000,000 plus hits. That’s a lot in English on a subject that takes place in an Asian country. I jumped 5-6 pages deep into that search and didn’t find a single result in Korean language. Maybe something they are still not very proud of?

Many people around the world are obviously against the consumption of dog meat, and for good reason. For us living in Korea, we don’t often hear about this subject. It isn’t something people talk about a lot, and we don’t often see dog restaurants. We know that they exist but wouldn’t know where to go to eat dog. At least to us, that’s a good indication of the lack of interest amongst Koreans these days in dog meat.

For more information on this touchy subject, click here.

Last week’s LIKE IT video 🙂