Korea Dog Meat Farmers’ Association versus People Power Party
The similarities and differences between dog farmer protests and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' anti-immigration bus tour
Growing up, I was used to seeing the occasional group of Jehovah’s Witnesses (also known as the Watchtower Society) knocking on doors. The idea that they’d have to knock on 740 doors to make one convert (approximately 6,500 hours of activity) sounded exhausting to me, but apparently it works. And that’s who I thought I saw walking down the street and ringing the bells of our condo this summer. Except there were so many of them on our block that I wondered if a major event was happening that day.
It wasn’t until a child of the bunch asked if anyone in the building spoke Spanish that I realized who the people were outside. I’d read news reports that a large group of migrants were temporarily being housed at a North Side Chicago facility called Broadway Armory, but that building is quite a walk from where I live. I shook my head, still disagreeing with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ methods to remove immigrants from the southern state by buses and airplanes into pro-immigrant states like Illinois.
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Regardless of how someone feels about illegal immigrants, bringing a massive group of living beings somewhere that they didn’t ask to be and telling them to fend for self is cruel — and confusing, especially with a language barrier. And while I understand that “no one asked them to come here,” nobody asked Christopher Columbus to show up in the Bahamas, rename it San Salvador nor did he ever reach North America. And yet, every October, “Columbus Day” is still printed on calendars and advertised on U.S. mattress sales. Columbus Day has still made its way into U.S. history books more than Indigenous People’s Day. The irony of anti-immigrant groups celebrating Columbus Day blows my mind every single year.
And this leads me to my next gripe: South Korean farmers complaining about the dog meat ban and threatening to release approximately 2 million dogs at the presidential office, the agriculture minister’s home and offices of lawmakers who agree with ending South Korea’s dog meat trade by 2027. With absolutely no sympathy for the dogs, who didn’t ask to be caged and involuntarily be put in slaughterhouses, these dog farmers are threatening to pull the same kind of stunt as the Florida governor. Instead of trying to create a plan to productively figure out what to do with the dogs, they’re focused on discussing the money they’ll lose if the People Power Party gets their way in the coming years.
Even though 86% of South Koreans have no plans to eat dog meat and the majority support a ban, according to the Humane Society International, these farmers are still pulling a “what about me?”