Korea’s largest dog meat trade market likely to shut down

The controversial dog meat trade in the Moran Market in Seongnam, a city near Seoul, will likely disappear.

The Seongnam city government signed a memorandum of understanding with the association representing merchants of the livestock stores in the market on Tuesday. The merchants agreed to stop storing and butchering dogs for sales and remove butchery facilities while the city government decided to provide support for the merchants by encouraging landlords to lower rental fees for them, providing loans at a low interest rate to help them change their job, recognizing them as a traditional market, enrolling them to the association representing merchants in traditional markets and upgrading the market’s facilities. The merchants will change their work by the end of February next year and the facility upgrade will be completed by early May.

The dog meat trade in the market started in the 1960s. There were as many as 54 dog meat traders in 2001, but the number decreased to 22 due to weak consumption after the 2002 Korea-Japan World Cup. Still, it is the largest dog meat market in Korea where around 80,000 dogs are traded every year. There has been controversy over the trade due to noises and odors stemming from storing dogs in a steel cage and slaughtering them. Every summer, animal rights groups held protests and residents near the market complained about this. Under the current livestock sanitary control law, dogs are not livestock and thus there was no legal ground to control the trade. Merchants also protested the move, mentioning their rights to trade and live.

To seek a fundamental solution, the city government plans to host an open discussion involving the National Assembly, animal rights groups, dog farms, and merchants trading dog meat in January next year.

Kyung-Hyun Nam bibulus@donga.com