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Earth Knowledge Bureau - Korean Dog Meat Customs
NO.1498 - Joseon dog meat customs
Author: Nai Yi Mu
Draft: Sun Lu / Proofreader: Cat Stu / Editor: Yakult
When it comes to North Korean food, most people think of kimchi and cold noodles, which have become representative elements of Korean culture and can often be seen in many film and television drama works.
The Deshan family lives in poverty and has kimchi all of a sudden
(Image courtesy of @"Please Answer 1988").)
In addition, in fact, another food is also loved by the majority of Korean people, which is dog meat. Not only Koreans in China, but also Koreans on the peninsula can also eat dogs, which has become one of the labels of early Korean immigrants to Europe and the United States.
How did dog meat become a Korean delicacy?
environmental factors
The earliest historical evidence of the consumption of dog meat in the Korean Peninsula can be traced back thousands of years from the excavation of dog bones from the Neolithic site in Changnyeong-gun, Gyeongsangnam-do, at the southern tip of the Korean Peninsula.
However, this thousands of years of history still cannot be fully calculated, because in the Environment of the Neolithic Age, which was extremely backward in production, humans ate everything, and archaeological evidence is difficult to use as a marker of cultural formation.
Learning to use fire and tools adds endless possibilities to the human diet, but the backward production conditions make it virtually impossible for humans to be picky eaters
(Photo: Wikipedia@Sandstein)▼
The historical relics that can really be regarded as the era of civilization must start from the Three Kingdoms era of Korea. A tomb mural was found in Hwanghae Province, in present-day south Korea, depicting a dog that had been slaughtered in a warehouse. This can be said to be the earliest record of the Shinshi era in the Korean Peninsula, and now this tomb site has been packaged with many tomb sites of the same period as the first world cultural heritage site in Korea, which has important documentary value.
This ancient custom of eating dog meat may be inseparable from the ancient agricultural environment of Korea. Most of the land on the mountainous Korean Peninsula is not suitable for farming and agricultural development, the effective land that can be reclaimed is very limited, coupled with the harsher conditions of the natural environment, climate, soil, etc. Under the old agricultural level, most of the peninsula residents rely on only land crops for a living, not to mention the development of a large number of livestock breeding to absorb high protein.
Three thousand miles of rivers and mountains, more than two thousand miles are mountains
But for humans, in addition to the constraints of religious beliefs, most people still have a pursuit of the animal protein and high fat contained in meat. However, at that time, people who could eat normal farmed meat were either rich or expensive, and other classes could only think of getting meat from other places.
Among the many meats, cattle as a means of production, horses as a strategic resource, will not eat until the last resort; pigs, sheep, chickens and other normal meats, need to be farmed to obtain; thus, dogs have become an option. Of course, since pigs, cattle and sheep cannot afford to raise, these selected dogs are not domestic dogs, most of them are ownerless wild dogs.
Dog slaughterhouse
(Image: Muellek Josef/Shutterstock)▼
It is precisely because dog eating in ancient Korea was not a large-scale breeding model, and eating dog meat in the West is easy to become a cultural stain, some peninsula scholars do not agree that eating dog meat is a traditional Korean culture. They believe that this is just some scattered phenomenon in the long history, which is far from the Korean national tradition.
Then some scholars, based on the historical records of the Joseon Dynasty in the 18th century, believe that the large-scale consumption of dog meat began at the beginning of the founding of The Joseon Dynasty, and its source came from China in the west.
Daming doesn't want to be this source... ▼
Even in the circumstances at the time, eating dog meat was often exclusive to the bottom population because they needed to replenish scarce protein. At this time, the government's attitude was intriguing, and they encouraged the Baiding class to eat dog meat, on the one hand, to solve the problem of famine, and on the other hand, to eliminate wild dogs.
At that time, some of the North Korean scholars also believed that dogs should be regarded as human companions, not food. Therefore, although their opinions were not finally implemented as a policy, there was absolutely no dog meat at the banquet of the scholars. It is precisely this choice of court culture that makes some scholars on the peninsula firmly deny that this is the "traditional food culture" of the peninsula.
The scholar may be going to say why not eat minced meat
(Photo: dapperland/Shutterstock)▼
However, ya culture has moral advantages, while popular culture has quantitative advantages. When the Korean Peninsula entered the modern society, the right to speak was gradually decentralized from the aristocratic class, and the "non-mainstream" eating habits of the white dings became the "mainstream".
How to eat dog meat
When it comes to the most traditional way to eat dog meat on the peninsula, of course, it is tonic soup (in fact, it is the elegant name of dog meat soup). It is a soup that is cooked with dog meat and white soda and corn, and eaten in a three-volt day. And this dish actually has many names in Korean, and the tonic soup is just one of the euphemisms, and the others include nutritious soup, four seasons soup, goat soup, and so on.
A bowl of tonic soup Bosintang
(Image: Fanfo/shutterstock)▼
According to common sense, why should dog meat, which is usually consumed in winter, continue to be eaten on a very hot three-volt day? This is because according to the traditional "health theory", it is necessary to regulate the "qi" in the human body to maintain good health, and in the summer, the human body tends to sweat more, so it is necessary to use dog meat to increase body temperature and excrete more sweat, in short, "to cure heat with heat".
Sweating when you look at it... ▼
In fact, the ideas of the upper echelons of the Joseon Dynasty are not monolithic, some scholars do not agree to eat dog meat, and some scholars believe that the tonic soup is worth drinking according to folk experience.
Around 1816, Ding Xueyou, the second son of the famous practical thinker Of the Joseon Dynasty, Ding Ruoyong, wrote a poem known as the "Song of the Peasant Moon". This poem can be said to be an important source of the peninsula's folk history, and it basically describes the various actions of ordinary peasant families on the peninsula during the year. In the description of the eighth month of the lunar calendar, it tells the story of a married woman who visits her parents with cooked dog meat, rice cakes, and rice wine, which can infer the popularity of tonic soup in that year.
You can go to the countryside and look for it
(Image courtesy of InSapphoWeTrust/flickr)▼
In the 1849 book "Chronicles of the Eastern Kingdom" written by the Peninsular scholar Hong Ximu, the recipe for tonic soup was also mentioned, including dog meat and green onions.
At the same time, in this book, the author also quotes the content of Sima Qian's "Records of History", which traces the origin of this dish back to 616 BC (the second year of Zhou Degong), using dogs as sacrifices to drive away insect plagues. However, the "worm" in the "History" refers to the heart disease in the human heart, which is actually "clam", and in the "Dong" book, the "worm" has become a creature such as locusts and pests that harm crops, which seems to be caused by the lack of learning on the Korean Peninsula.
The reason why it was necessary to cling to Middle-earth was to express the Chinese nature of folk culture, which at that time meant the authority of the theory in Korea. Combined with the yin-yang five-element theory that is also popular on the peninsula, dog meat is also a "fire" that can restrain the summer disease that represents "gold", further justifying eating dog meat.
What the author may not have expected is that the texts created at that time to improve the legitimacy of dog meat have become a powerful weapon for Korean scholars to divide the peninsula culture and dog meat.
Dog meat fades
The dog meat custom that has been circulating on the peninsula for so long has shown signs of decline in recent decades, especially in South Korea in the southern part of the peninsula.
After the Korean War, South Korea gradually became a developed country in successive rounds of development. In this series of processes, due to the close relationship with Europe and the United States, the values and cultures of Europe and the United States have gradually penetrated into all aspects of South Korea, and with the gradual strengthening of the economy, South Korea has also produced the mentality of "leaving Asia and entering Europe" that Japan had had in that year.
Coupled with the large number of Non-Governmental Organizations in South Korea, international animal protection activists have a lot of criticism of the indifference of traditional Koreans to the environment, and Koreans have spontaneously regarded the custom of eating dog meat, which has a relationship with China, as a rafter. This ambivalence is vividly expressed in South Koreans when they speak out about the Yulin Dog Meat Festival, on the one hand, they say that China's Yulin Dog Meat Festival is not on the table at all, but on the other hand, they claim that this is because Guangxi dog cuisine is far worse than Korean dog cuisine, and Guangxi people do not know whether to eat it or not.
Is making it delicious is the reason for slaughtering dogs in large numbers?
(Seoul Dog Meat Restaurant Image: Rhett Sutphin/wikipedia)▼
The voice of the people will eventually evolve with the times into policy and law. In 1984, the South Korean government promulgated the "Comprehensive Measures to Prevent Slaughter and Consumption of Dog Meat", but the rectification plan did not force the people to ban the consumption of dog meat, but required that the dog meat stalls opened in bustling downtown areas and roadsides must be relocated, which can be regarded as a city appearance rectification policy. But from the side, it can be seen that eating dog meat is no longer as fragrant as it used to be in the eyes of the high-level.
Dog meat at Gyeongdong Market in South Korea
(Image courtesy of Gaël Chardon/wikipedia)▼
Since then, the voices of boycotting dog meat have grown, and on three occasions they have created a worldwide momentum, during several international sports events hosted by South Korea.
Perhaps the most impressive thing for foreigners is that on the eve of the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games, animal protection organizations in some European and American countries did not hesitate to threaten to refuse to participate in the Seoul Summer Olympics and strongly demanded that South Korea ban dog meat. In the end, South Korea adopted a low-profile concession, changing the long-established "dog broth" to "nutritious soup" and "tonic soup", etc., and both sides made concessions, so that the dog had no name in South Korea.
(Photo: Mark Fahey/flickr)▼
During the 2002 World Cup in Japan and South Korea, some animal protection groups once again set off a wave of boycotting the eating of dog meat, including even FIFA.
But this time the outside world forced a little too fierce, then the Chairman of the Japan-South Korea World Cup Football Tournament South Korea Organizing Committee Chairman Zheng Mengzhun directly replied: "Eat dog meat, what about FIFA!" And further clarified that the issue of eating dog meat is a matter for South Korea itself and is not subject to FIFA's jurisdiction. This counterattack was immediately echoed by the public from all walks of life in South Korea.
Reasons to insist on eating dog meat: this is the traditional food culture of the country!
(Screenshot from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/1651543.stm)▼
Following the FIFA attack, the world media have participated in the controversy, including many well-known media such as the Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, and the BBC, most of which have attacked South Korea's "dog meat culture". Later, South Korea responded by saying it would prevent animal cruelty by implementing more effective measures. During this period, many dog meat shops were forced to close, and the dog meat restaurants that still existed throughout Seoul had to be relocated from the main street and renamed "Baosheng Yukan" or "Four Seasons Soup Restaurant".
The signature of the tonic soup
(Photo: Ki young /youngshutter)▼
Since then, the boycott of dog meat has intensified. On July 20, 2006, some citizens protested against the "tonic soup" at Gwanghwamun. Later, a "dog meat festival" originally planned to be held on July 1, 2011 at the Peony Market in Seongnam,Gyeonggi Province was also cancelled due to boycotts.
On the eve of the 2018 Winter Olympics, South Korea closed its largest dog meat market. At the same time, in order to improve the surrounding environment of the Winter Olympic Games, the government of Gangwon-do and Pyeongchang County, where the event was held, encouraged restaurants selling dog broth to remove billboards and change menus, and provided 10 million won of financial support to eligible merchants, and restaurants that changed menus could receive up to 20 million won of financial support from gangwon-do and Pyeongchang County governments.
Buying dog meat in South Korea in 2019 is also still easy
2019/1/13, Anyang, South Korea
(Photo: hyotographics/Shutterstock)▼
Since October last year, Seoul has completely stopped slaughtering dogs.
With the development of a series of public opinion-oriented, not eating dog meat has slowly evolved into fashion among young Koreans. Nowadays, whenever there are "three volts", most of the people who supplement in the "self-preservation soup restaurant" are middle-aged and elderly, and if there are young people suspected of entering and leaving it, most of them will deny it, because eating dog meat has been regarded as a barbaric act in the general public opinion in South Korea.
The habits that the elderly have developed for a long time are difficult to change for a while
And it's not so much about public opinion
(Photo: Rookie Stock/shutterstock)▼
However, the story of what happened in the southern part of the Korean Peninsula did not affect the settlements of other Ethnic Koreans. Ethnic Koreans in North Korea, northeast China, and Central Asia still retain the traditional custom of eating dog meat.
Eating or not eating is freedom, as long as you don't illegally eat wild animals that are at risk of disease.
bibliography:
http://www.dangdangnews.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=22709
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosintang
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_meat_consumption_in_South_Korea
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_meat
https://www.thenewslens.com/article/84133
WANG Yuantao. How Koreans face "refusal to eat dog meat"[J]. See the World, 2014, 000(013):P.84-84.
LIANG Yan. Whales have large mouths, Japanese people have a bigger appetite, dog meat soup is fragrant, and Koreans are embarrassed[J]. China Animal Health, 2001(11):44-45.
*The content of this article is provided by the author and does not represent the position of the Earth Knowledge Bureau
Cover image from: hyotographics/Shutterstock
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