North Koreans risk the wrath of the regime if they keep dogs as pets, Pyongyang has decreed, warning that canines should only be kept for meat and fur.
The bizarre ban was announced through the Socialist Women’s Union of Korea, according to a source in South Pyongan province, which lies north of the capital.
Speaking to Daily NK, a newspaper in neighboring South Korea, the source listed the offenses that could leave dog owners at odds with the government’s socialist ethos.
“Treating a dog as a family member who eats and sleeps with the family is incompatible with the socialist way of life and should be strictly avoided,” they said.
Dressing dogs in clothes, as exemplified by Western celebrities such as Paris Hilton, was also singled out for condemnation.
Kim Jong-un’s people risk the wrath of the strict regime if they keep dogs as pets after being warned that dogs should only be bred for meat and fur
The source continued: ‘The practice of dressing dogs up as if they were human, putting pretty ribbons in their hair, wrapping them in a blanket and burying them when they die is a bourgeois activity.
‘It’s one of the ways wealthy people waste money in a capitalist society.’
Describing the regime’s position, the source said: ‘Dogs are basically meat, raised outside according to their nature and then eaten when they die.
‘Therefore, such behavior is totally unsocialist and must be strictly eliminated.’
The regime also emphasized that “the purpose of raising dogs is to collect more furs,” the source said.
Rising levels of dog ownership – a practice described by authorities as carrying the ‘stench of the bourgeoisie’ – reportedly motivated the new edict.
And while citizens were given the chance to deal with the matter ‘quietly’, non-compliance could trigger a ‘mass movement’ to ‘eliminate’ the practice, the source said.
The custom of keeping hounds must eventually die out, union members were warned.
The practice of keeping dogs as pets started small in North Korea in the early 2000s, where they were usually guard dogs
One dog owner described by Daily NK was reduced to tears by the announcement.
‘What should I do with the dog I love so much? I can’t just kill it and I can’t just give it up, she reportedly said.
Greg Scarlatoiu, executive director of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK), which documents the Kim regime’s atrocities, said it was a ‘ridiculous’ decree.
He said: ‘The Kim regime criminalises normal behaviour, including visiting a relative in a neighboring village without a travel permit, crossing the border without regime approval or possessing a religious book.
‘The ongoing suppression of pet ownership as non-socialist behavior – this attempt to sever the multi-millennium human-dog bond by ideological decree – is the epitome of ridiculous prohibition.’
According to the source in South Pyongan, the practice of keeping small dogs as pets started in North Korea in the early 2000s, where they were usually guard dogs.
They said: ‘There have always been families who had cats to catch mice, but there weren’t many families with dogs.
‘However, that number has gradually increased, and recently there has been a noticeable increase in foreign dog breeds such as Pomeranians and Shih Tzus, which used to be a rare sight in North Korea.’
Although dog meat is eaten in both Koreas, it has become controversial in the South, and the Seoul government passed a law in January banning its production and sale.
A dog meat soup known as Dangogiguk is sometimes served to foreign visitors in the north.