The Politics of Dog

The line dividing acceptable from unacceptable meat is sometimes a fine one.

While vegetarians naturally reject meat of all kinds, the rest of America maintains some form of double standard -- chicken but not crow, beef but not horse, venison but not reindeer, lamb but not mutton, legs and wings and rumps but not hearts or lungs or tongues. Some Americans are adventurous meat eaters who will cross the line and enthusiastically tuck into possum, ostrich, or alligator. One line in America, however, is inviolable. Anonymous livestock and wildlife are fair game, but pets are a different matter, and dog in particular remains the most potent meat taboo. Whenever I mention to my friends that I have eaten -- and enjoyed -- dog stew, they look at me with the sort of horror reserved for hangmen and white supremacists.

Such knee-jerk revulsion has taken a more organized form as animal-rights groups have focused their attention on one particular outpost of dog eating: Korea. Since she first challenged this subspecialty of Korean cuisine in 1988, French actress Brigitte Bardot is the celebrity most associated with the global campaign. Her allies have filled the Internet with reports that smack of "yellow peril," boasting such titles as "Korea: The Sadistic Country" and "Korea's Cruel Cuisine." Recently, these Web sites have promoted the e-rumor that Koreans are raising meaty St. Bernards for their stews, a double taboo for Westerners -- not mere dog stew but dogs-that-drool stew. Activists are challenging the very act (meat is murder), the animals targeted (a form of fratricide), the methods of slaughter (not a pretty sight), and the purported spread of the custom to the United States (where it is difficult to separate fact from urban myth).

The controversy has attracted a fair share of journalists, who have indulged their Orientalist biases by depicting Koreans in almost cannibalistic terms. This coverage has come in both highbrow (National Public Radio) and lowbrow (Fox) varieties. Of the all the media weighing in on the subject, however, perhaps only William Saletan in Slate has looked at the issue with any degree of impartiality. As the 2002 World Cup (which will take place in both Japan and South Korea in May and June) approaches journalists looking for "color" will likely be delivering many more dog stories stripped of cultural and political context.

From all the brouhaha, you might expect dog-soup restaurants on every corner in Korea. But dog meat is not, in fact, especially easy to find. While dog is usually listed as the fourth most popular meat in Korea after beef, pork, and chicken, the government banned sales of all "foods deemed unsightly" during the 1988 Olympics in Seoul so as not to give foreigners the wrong impression of Korean culture. Although some legislators are trying to overturn the ban and regulate the industry -- an eminently sensible approach that should satisfy diners and activists alike -- the government is unlikely to change the law with the World Cup around the corner.

Because dog meat is technically illegal in Korea, you'll never find it on a menu per se. Instead, you have to keep a keen eye out for what is called poshintang, or "tonic soup." Particularly popular in the summer, during the dog days of the Chinese calendar between July 19 and August 18, poshintang is alleged to make men more "vital." Even putting a drop of the soup on your foot is supposed to make you stronger. Dog soup tends to attract men of a certain age, the same ones lapping up Viagra the world over.

But why are most fingers pointing at Korea? Dog is eaten in China, Taiwan, Burma, Indonesia, Laos, Vietnam, Ghana, and the Congo, and by various indigenous peoples and desperately hungry Arctic explorers. Among the dog recipes in Calvin Schwabe's landmark cookbook Unmentionable Cuisine, not a single one comes from Korea. In literature, the "dogeaters" in Jessica Hagedorn's novel of the same name come from the Philippines while the dog narrator Almost Soup in Louise Erdrich's The Antelope Wife is rescued from a pot on a Dakota reservation. Yet even before the World Cup brought increased attention to Korea, poshintang launched a thousand Internet diatribes, many of them American.