Photo: Lady Freethinker/City of Namyangju
Animal advocates are celebrating the Nakwon Auction House’s closure. The Namyangju, South Korea dog meat auction house was one of the largest in the country.
With assistance from their South Korean rescue partnerSave Korean Dogs, Lady Freethinker presented their investigation’s findings to Namyangju’s Mayor Cho Kwang-han, along with a petition demanding the closure of the auction house with over 46,000 signatures.
The dogs found at the auction house before the closure were removed from the facility. The owner of the auction house has “voluntarily reported the business’s closure to the government,” per the release.
“We applaud Mayor Cho for his decisive action, which sends a strong international message that dog meat farming must become a thing of the past,” Nina Jackel, founder and president of Lady Freethinker, said in a statement. “Lady Freethinker’s investigation of Nakwon Auction House found terrified dogs cowering in cramped, dirty cages while workers jabbed them with metal hooks. Breeding and farming dogs for meat causes enormous and unnecessary animal suffering, as the majority of Koreans do not eat dog meat.”
Lady Freethinker
While the dog meat trade remains legal in South Korea, the auction house was closed down because of “constructing an unlawful structure and changing its usage without a permit,” Lady Freethinker added in their release.
The nonprofit hopes that closures like this will eventually lead to the larger actions necessary to ban the dog meat trade from South Korea, especially when polls show that consumer demand for dog meat is steadily declining in the country.
source: people.com
