Restaurant Owner Died of Stress-related Heart Attack after False Report about Dog Meat

An old Korean American woman, who has been under severe stress due to the false media report about `selling dog meat,` died of a heart attack here in Korea last night. People said that she was preparing to leave for the U.S. after the media company offered compensations for releasing wrong information.

63 year-old Park Chang-soon, who is running a restaurant `Naruteo` in Flushing, New York, collapsed on the platform of Wangsipri subway station at about 12:10 p.m. on January 13. She was immediately taken to hospital but never gained consciousness.

`Naruteo` became a center of the dog soup controversy with `the Kim`s Farm` after Warner Brothers 11 made a TV series about Korean habit of eating dog meat in November 2001 by visiting the farm and the restaurant with a hidden camera. At that time, the local broadcaster claimed that `the Kim`s Farm` was a supplier of dog meat and `Naruteo` used it to serve dog soups to customers.

Even after the Agriculture Department of New York officially concluded in December 2001, ˝Both of the businesses did not sell dog soups and the farm was selling coyotes,˝ she was never able to be free from criticism. With her heart disease aggravating in the wake of the incident, she returned to Korea to meet her 95-year-old mother with failing health. T

Then, she received good news from the U.S. – Kim Ju-ho, owner of the farm filed a lawsuit asking for $7million-worth compensations and WB11 agreed to settle the case.

˝If the cause of her death is a heart attack, we can conclude that she died from severe stress,˝ said officials at the hospital. Her family plans to file a case again WB11 if a heart attack turns out to be the cause of her death.

Sun-Woo Kim sublime@donga.com