A South Korean man convicted of animal cruelty is being investigated after over 1,000 dogs were discovered dead in his home in the country’s northwestern province.
The suspect, who is in his 60s, allegedly found abandoned puppies and starved them to death. Yang Pyeong, Gyeonggi Province, was the site of the property, where South Korean police were summoned after a local who discovered the house filed a police report. As per the reports, the strange situation came to light because of a complaint made by a local who, while searching for their dog in Yang Pyeong, Gyeonggi Province, happened to discover the man’s home.
According to a member of the animal rights organization Care, the accused received 10,000 won ($7.70) from dog breeders for each dog in order to “take care of” them. However, there have been claims made by several activists from the animal rights organization Coexistence of Animal Rights on Earth (CARE) that the guy was paid by dog farms to get rid of canines who were no longer suitable for breeding or weren’t appealing enough to be sold. The article noted that the member also claimed that the man had starved these canines to death within a cage since 2020.
Images of dead dogs in cages, sacks, and rubber boxes in the yard of the man’s home had painfully surfaced. The Care members who arrived at the crime scene with them said that the ground was covered in layers of decomposing bodies, which were then topped by further bodies to form rows, and so on. They also showed that the canines who were still alive had skin conditions and were underweight.
Animal abuse cases have been on the rise in South Korea, despite the country’s severe animal protection regulations, which may result in prison sentences of up to three years or penalties of up to 30 million won for those who intentionally kill an animal by depriving it of food or water.
Two of the four rescued canines were in very severe condition and were receiving treatment. In just a decade, there has been a double-digit increase in the number of animal abuse cases in South Korea. According to the data, there were 69 animal abuse instances in South Korea in 2010 and 914 cases in 2019. Animal abandonment instances increased by over 40,000, according to the Animal and Plant Quarantine Agency of the agriculture ministry.
Furthermore, a survey revealed that there are 1,156 dog farms in South Korea that breed over 500,000 dogs for the meat market and kill about 388,000 of them annually.
