In the Danger Zone (17 page)

Ukrainians appear to be digging their heels into the ground to avoid being dragged back to the dark ages, and this has created a tough people who don't care much for insincere smiles. But I'm off to South Korea next, where I suspect they are primed for grinning, strapped into corporate joy-seats on a stellar economic trajectory that has taken the world by surprise for the last 50 years.

POPULATION:
49 million

PERCENTAGE LIVING ON LESS THAN
$2
A DAY:
50%

UNDP HUMAN DEVELOPMENT INDEX:
26/177

CORRUPTION PERCEPTIONS INDEX POSITION:
42/163

GDP (NOMINAL) PER CAPITA:
$18,392 (34/179)

FOOD AID RECIPIENTS:
n/a

MALNUTRITION:
n/a

South Korea is one of the great economic miracles of the 20th century. It leapt from being a dirt-poor, inward-looking, Chinese-dominated and war-ravaged wasteland in the 1950s to becoming one of the leading tiger economies of Asia. But underneath this extraordinary progress lie endless mucky secrets: dodgy corporate governance; some tricksy accounting (spectacularly revealed during the Asian financial crisis of 1997-9); and a comprehensive sweeping aside of barriers to industrial progress, such as democracy and human rights. During the middle of the 20th century corruption festered, and military rulers crushed opposition and ran the country for their own ends until 1992, when a semblance of genuine democracy began to creep in.

It's a better place now, but whilst corruption is still a huge problem, most modern Koreans are reluctant to criticize. Perhaps this is due to the power of Confucian hierarchical systems and the obsessive respect shown to elders. Or perhaps they're just easily embarrassed (Koreans do seem to have a debilitating fear of embarrassment). Either way, there are some problems they'd rather tuck under the carpet . . .

I'm going to South Korea to find out about dogmeat. Not the strange meatesque compound we feed to dogs, but meat that has come from dogs raised for human consumption. I know, I know, it's an emotive subject, but it's one that the UK media has generally used only for hysterical and unedifying journalism. Most reporters, including some from my own beloved BBC, have seen fit to file copy essentially declaiming: OH, MY GOD, THEY EAT DOGS!

So here's what's under the Korean carpet: in the run-up to the Seoul Olympics in 1988, dog restaurants were banned in order to deflect national embarrassment over 'unsightly food' (heaven forfend). As soon as the Olympics were over, the restaurants swiftly reappeared without opposition. When the football World Cup came along in 2002, there was another furore. The FIFA president himself urged South Koreans to stop eating dogmeat. (Quite why a bunch of football executives installed themselves as arbiters of carnivorous relativism is unclear, and certainly declamations of morality are pretty laughable coming from either FIFA or the IOC.)

Whatever their reasons, it was enough to embarrass the Koreans, and despite the fact that dog is a popular national dish, embarrassment is the one thing they can't handle. The dogmeat dealers were all swept off the streets again. By this time, though, the government had already removed all legislation from the industry, thereby officially ignoring its existence, so now they can't be said to sanction it (and the international community is assuaged), yet they haven't lost face at home to nationalistic dog-eating voters. Brilliant!

As a result, dog farmers can do what they want to the 1-3 million dogs raised each year for human consumption.

I'm hoping that this visit will provoke a thoughtful and dignified moral exploration of food taboos, rather than an ethical bun fight. I'm going to try to keep an open mind, take a look at the whole industry, try to understand the Korean national character, do a bit of moral cogitation and, as long as it's been raised decently, at the end of the trip I'd like to eat dog.

When I first told my wife about this plan she was wearily appalled (she's yet to match my enthusiasm for eclectic foods, but I'm working on her), but she later became genuinely worried about the reaction from the public – people who might target me for eating dog. I told her, 'I'm not doing this in a gung-ho, look-how-hard-I-am extreme eating kind of way,' but she was still nervous. 'There are weird people out there,' she said. And she was to be proved right.

Let's get one thing out of the way: I don't see anything particularly wrong with eating dog. I don't think I'm a nasty person. I certainly haven't set out to upset animal-lovers and I won't steal your schnauzer if you invite me for supper – I just think that if you've resolved the moral and emotional complexities of carnivorousness to eat cows, pigs and chickens (and I think I have), then you
should
be able to eat pretty much anything, as long as it's lived a decent life.

I may differ from the vast majority of people in Britain on this one, but it seems odd that one intelligent, cute, loving animal that has stood by man's side and sustained him in his hours of need (I'm talking about the noble pig here) is somehow less valuable than another. At the same time I'm not blind to emotion: I know that people see dogs as companions, and there's a powerful bond between people and their pets. But what about when they're
not
raised as pets? I'm not eating
your
dog, after all.

I believe a lot of other things about carnivorousness, namely that we shouldn't cause unnecessary pain to animals we eat, and that we have a responsibility of care towards all those animals that give their lives for our stomachs. I'd like to think that we have an unspoken contract with the animals we eat (as Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall states eloquently in
Meat),
and it's one that supermarket shoppers in the UK violate hypocritically every day when buying battery chickens and intensively reared pork.

• • • • •

I sit on the aeroplane wondering what the hell I'm doing. After all my self-righteous justification of dog-eating, I start to think rationally. It's pretty early in my career as a food writer and TV presenter and I've decided to eat the one meal that's guaranteed to upset everybody on the known planet: my wife, my kids and my dog-owning mother, but also everyone who watches food programmes and buys food books . . . in other words, anyone who might conceivably be called an audience.

I love dogs. But I also love cats, ducks, pigs, cows, chickens, rabbits, quails, chinchillas, goats (I especially love goats), cats and mice. I don't believe that any of them has any less of a right to avoid being eaten. But that doesn't necessarily mean that they
should
be eaten. Or does it? This is the problem with being a thinking carnivore – you have to spend so much time and effort justifying your actions. Part of the joy of being a vegetarian must be that life is so much easier.

Seoul

We arrive in Seoul. It's one of those super-modern, dystopian fantasy cities lit by neon signs and vast electronics ads. It's corporate, sober and impersonal, in marked contrast to my guide Yoon-Jung, who is gorgeous, funny and friendly, although she betrays her Koreanness in her ferocious work ethic and propensity to turn lightly pink immediately after drinking alcohol. I like her immediately.

Although I'm knackered, I've heard that food here is a real adventure and this fires my gastronautical zeal so I drag Yoon-Jung out to the nearby Itaewon Galbi restaurant for an induction into the strange and wonderful cuisine of Korea. We eat semi-fermented raw crab (which tastes like rotten crab, unsurprisingly, and much as I try to enjoy it . . . I don't). Our table has a charcoal grill in the middle, and the waitress brings us a variety of ribs, prawns and chicken that we cook ourselves. This is my kind of eating: hands-on stuff, with a sea of extra bowls of kimchi (fermented cabbage with chilli, which tastes great, but doesn't half make you windy), red pepper sauce and various vegetables. Yoon-Jung turns lightly pink, and we all turn in for an early night.

My First Dog Farm

Talk about being thrown in at the deep end: it's my first day and I am on my way to a dog farm. I overslept this morning, so I'm already in a bit of a fluster. 'Dog farm!' Ye gods, it's such an alien concept to me that it sends shivers down my spine, like the idea of a child farm. But I mustn't be a slave to sentiment: fear and ignorance is how prejudice evolves, and just because it's unusual doesn't mean that it's bad.

Look at me! I'm drowning in moral turpitude and I haven't got out of the car yet.

Korean dog farmers are notoriously secretive, and the industry as a whole hates the Western media, which it blames for vilifying a traditional national dish, so Yoon-Jung has scored a major triumph in getting me access to Korea's biggest dog farm. But to achieve this, she's had to talk to some pretty shady people.

I meet Dr Dogmeat in a motorway lay-by. Yup, you heard right: Dr Dogmeat. He's actually Yong-Geun Ann, professor of food nutrition at Chungcheong College, but he's become known as Dr Dogmeat due to his research into the cultural, moral and nutritional significance of eating dog. He clearly likes the nickname, relishing the notoriety it gives him and using it as his byline on the myriad papers and articles he writes.

He has come up with 350 uses for dogmeat in various products, and it's fair to say that Dr Dogmeat represents the pro-dog-eating lobby (all his work is unashamedly, and occasionally hysterically, pro dogmeat). He's not particularly friendly, but he wants to show me how reasonable and decent the dog industry is, and he's taking me to Korea's biggest dog farm to prove his point. We drive in convoy, following his 4x4 into the countryside.

Rural Korea isn't particularly pretty: it's an agricultural wasteland where little love is given to outside space, which I find odd in such an overcrowded country. The countryside seems to have suffered rampant, unregulated development at the hands of economic necessity, and in the middle of rolling fields, you'll often find an incongruous tower block.

On the way, Yoon-Jung gets a call on her mobile. Apparently there will be a Korean TV news crew at the dog farm, and they want to film me as I take a look around. They are already there, so I don't have much choice in the matter.

Yoon-Jung's phone rings again. There are now two separate TV news crews at the farm, both of whom want to film me. This is getting ridiculous. Yoon-Jung thinks that Dr Dogmeat and the owner of the farm have tipped them off.

We finally arrive at the dog farm to find, in addition to the two TV crews, a delegation from the local government office and at least two photographers. It's not entirely clear what they're doing here, but they say they want to ensure fair media coverage of the farm. This is odd, because a) in Korea there are no regulations that apply to the dogmeat industry so there's nothing to be fair about; b) none of them speak English so they wouldn't know what I was saying anyway; and c) if they didn't like something I said or did, what exactly are they expecting to do? Smash our cameras?

The dog farm doesn't look anything special – much like any busy, slightly rundown working cattle farm. The only difference is the sound of a large number of dogs barking. I meet the dog farmer, Mr Yong Bok Chin. He doesn't appear to be the devil incarnate, although he does have a business card with a picture of a cute dog on one side, and a picture of a restaurant on the other. In fact, he's handsome, solid and friendly, if a little nervous of all the attention.

I'm given a bright blue disposable suit to cover my clothes, and some paper shoe covers. I look thoroughly ridiculous, and I'm feeling oddly stiff in front of all the cameras. Mr Chin leads us off to a large iron shed and my journey begins.

As Mr Chin opens the door to the shed, the dogs go crazy. I don't know if it's like this at Crufts, but the sound of 3,500 dogs barking in unison is quite painful. And immediately after the cacophony comes the smell. It's horrendous. Imagine concentrating three months' worth of excrement from 3,500 dogs in a single barn. It's hard not to gag.

So what's a dog farm like?

Extraordinary and unsettling. There are several thousand metal cages, most of them about 2×3×3 metres. Each cage houses two or three dogs with a fairly small amount of room for them to run around – they aren't free range, but neither are they battery farmed. The cages are raised off the ground so that the excrement falls through the bottom. There are no concessions to comfort, no toys, no beds and no names – they aren't treated as pets in any way, but I still feel a blind, residual affection for them: they wag their tails, try to lick me and run about, barking excitedly.

So is this really bad animal husbandry? Well, call me heartless, but I'm not so sure. It certainly isn't bucolic bliss and the smell isn't nice, but the dogs are very healthy, well fed and, if tail wagging is a good indicator, they seem happy. Many play with their cage-mates. It is a shock to see animals I view as pets being raised this dispassionately, but the psychological assumptions I'd made – that they need treats, love and human affection – are tempered by the fact that these are livestock and have been raised much as cows might be. Although they look like pets, they haven't been treated as man's best friend, haven't run for sticks or won medals for their fine bone structure or well-performed tricks.

The dogs look happy enough, although what I can't see is their behaviour over a long period: perhaps they are frustrated at being locked up, and perhaps they fight each other when humans aren't looking. I realize that, like any livestock, it wouldn't benefit their farmer if they were unhappy or ill, simply because they'd fetch a lower market price.

But the idea of a dog farm is still strange to me, and I start to feel a little sick. We wander up and down the rows of cages, and I try to disguise my shock. Eventually I leave and sit outside to take stock of things.

I talk to Yong Bok Chin and try to understand why he farms dogs, and how he feels about it. He says that farming is as difficult here as anywhere.

'I wasn't making money from traditional farming, so I started rearing dogs for market, and now I make a decent living.'

The government hasn't tried to stop him and he feels happy that his animals are well cared for. We talk about the whole concept of pet ownership, and he claims that people in the West put too much store on pet dogs because the family unit has begun to break down, whereas Koreans have much stronger family ties.