식용목적의 개 도살행위의 동물보호법 위반여부에 관한 고찰 = Study on whether dog slaughtering for food violates the Animal Protection Act

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

There have been a lot of disputes over dog meat for a long period of time without any easy solution. The animal rights groups have demanded the termination of the custom of dog meat and filed claims against dog meat sellers on the violation of the Animal Protection Act. Recently, a court has made a guilty verdict but there have been severe resistances against the verdicts.
Korean people have enjoyed dog meat from the olden days and even these days a lot of people visit the dog meat restaurant on one of the three dog days. Though there have been less and less people who visit the dog meat restaurant these days, dog meat is still enjoyed by some people. But, according to the current law, dogs fall under livestock as specified in the Livestock Industry Act. But, it is excluded from the scope of livestock specified in the Livestock Products Sanitary Control Act. So, the rearing and slaughtering of dog for meat is located in the scope which is not applicable by some laws.
Article 8, Paragraph 1 of the Animal Protection Act specifies that no person shall commit any of the “cruel offenses” against animals without any justifiable grounds specified in the related laws. Whether the slaughtering of dogs for food is a brutal method depends on the individual slaughtering act. But it falls on the case where the animal is killed “without any justifiable grounds specified in the related laws”. But it is not illegal because that case falls on the act which is not in conflict with the social practices considering the reality that the dogs are used for meat.
This is not the issue of whether dog meat is right or wrong. In addition, it is not the scope which can be allowed or prohibited by laws and it is not necessary to enforce the law on that. Instead, it would be most reasonable and constitutional to legalize dog meat and for people to make the final decision.