North Koreans Ordered To Handover Pet Dogs To Be Killed For Meat As Food Shortage Rocks Country

Kim Jong-Un, the Supreme Leader of North Korea, has ordered that pet dogs in Pyongyang, capital of the country, to be rounded up and handover so that they can be killed for food.

This comes after he announced in July that owning a pet is now against the law and declared that pet dogs are a symbol of “decadence”.

A source told South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo newspaper;

Authorities have identified households with pet dogs and are forcing them to give them up or forcefully confiscating them and putting them down. Some of the dogs are sent to state-run zoos or sold to dog meat restaurants.

Chosun Ilbo newspaper reports that pet owners are “cursing Kim Jong-un behind his back” but there is little they can do since refusal to comply attracts grave consequences.

Once the pets are rounded up, it is said that some go to zoos while some are sold into the restaurant trade, where dogs are regularly consumed. Pyongyang, according to Daily Mail, has a number of specialized dog eateries.

Chosun Ilbo reports that although pet ownership was long frowned upon in North Korea, the state relented on the rule since late 1990s, when the rich of Pyongyang started owning pets as symbols of superiority.

North Korea was hit hard by a number of natural disasters last year, which impacted the harvest, while it has been badly affected by flooding again this month, with crops in the key agriculture regions wiped out.

The nation has suffered serious losses in the flooding, however it could not accept any outside assistance because of the possibility of the coronavirus spreading.

Nearly 100,000 acres of arable land have been inundated, with nearly 17,000 homes and more than 600 public buildings destroyed.

The severe flooding caused by monsoon rains have prompted the leader to feed victims with his own private grain reserves.

Nearly 1,500 acres of rice fields were flooded as well as 179 housing blocks and 730 single-story homes destroyed.

Kim’s decision to used his reserves have gained attention from some diplomats, describing it as an ‘SOS signal to China’ for emergency aid.

A recent UN report have stated that as many as 60 percent of North Korea’s 25.5 million people are facing “widespread food shortages” that have been worsened by international sanctions imposed on the regime for its nuclear missile programmes.