Kim Jong Un, the North Korean leader has ordered pet dogs to be confiscated in the country’s capital. The reason given was that the pooches represent Western “decadence’’. However, pet owners fear they are really being rounded-up to be sold to restaurants for meat to fight food shortage.
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Kim issued the directive in July to round up the pets, claiming they were part of “a ‘tainted’ trend by bourgeouis ideology,’’ a source told the English edition of Chosun Ilbo, a South Korean newspaper.
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North Korea has launched a clampdown on the ownership of pet dogs among the Pyongyang elite as food supplies run short.
Trumpeted as protecting the country against capitalist “decadence,” the move appears aimed at appeasing increasing public discontent amid the dire economic situation.
However, pet ownership was long considered Western decadence, but attitudes seem to have relaxed after the North hosted the World Festival of Youth and Students in 1989, and the Pyongyang elite started flaunting expensive lapdogs as status symbols.
The ‘Pleasure Squad’ is Kim Jong Un’s secret harem of virgin schoolgirls. The 2,000-strong harem provides entertainment for high-ranking North Korean officials including bizarre sexual games and orgies – not much social-distancing there.https://t.co/LGBetrGvJI
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The real reason for the move seems to be North Korea’s food shortage.
The source told the South Korean newspaper that the “authorities have identified households with pet dogs and are forcing them to give them up or forcefully confiscating them and putting them down.”
Some of the dogs are sent to state-run zoos or sold to dog meat restaurants, the source added.
In June 2019, a report by the United Nations stated that North Korea had experienced the worst harvests in over a decade along with severe food shortages that affected 40% of North Korea’s population. At the time South Korea enacted a plan to provide US$8 million worth of food aid to North Korea.
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