In the Danger Zone (18 page)

I ask him if he has a pet dog, and he surprises me by saying that he does. I ask him if he'll eat his pet when it dies, and he nearly falls off his chair with laughter.

'Of course not – no – if he dies I'll bury him.'

I suggest that this is odd, considering his profession.

'These dogs are farmed dogs, livestock for meat, and he's not. So he wouldn't be very tasty. The taste is different. I wouldn't eat him,' he explains.

The Korean TV crews keep bugging me for an interview, and I finally give in.

'Why have you come here?' they ask.

'To try to understand the dogmeat industry,' I say.

They become aggressive, accusing me of bias – they've seen another BBC news report, and it was very one-sided and xenophobic – why would I be different?

I'm shocked at the ferocity of their attack – they have no grounds for claiming I'm biased – I've barely said anything yet. I tell them that I'm here to try to understand Korea, and that I will happily eat dog if I think it's a decent industry.

Well, is it?'

'Give me a chance! I've only been here for half a day – why don't you ask me that again when I've been here for two weeks?'

They take this as an invitation and say that they'll definitely interview me the day before I leave. Damn – I wasn't expecting that.

Dr Dogmeat's Bosintang

I head off for a restaurant that, coincidentally, is owned by Chin, and I get my first glimpse of dog as meat. Chin brings some cuts of dog into the kitchen: an entire hindquarter including a tail, a back and rack of ribs, some intestines and strips of fat. It all looks identifiably canine as he drops it into a vast pressure-cooker full of water. Again, it's disconcerting to see but I'm surprised that I don't feel more of a sense of shock, although it's probably because the fur has been burnt off and the carcass cleaned, so the result looks very much like any meat prepared for eating. Chin puts the pot on to boil, and beckons me into the dining area. Apparently Dr Dogmeat wants me to see something.

He shows me some enormous posters he's had made up to advertise 350 innovative uses of dog he's come up with. Dog oil face cream – I kid you not (helps prevent freckles and pimples, apparently), dog oil hand cream, dried grated dog (for seasoning), and sliced dog penis snacks. In fact, there's a whole poster dedicated to the joys of dog penis – Chinese dishes of prettily fanned penises, and every possible cooking method from pickling, jerking, sautéing, braising, air-drying and grating. It's a veritable orgy of dog chopper. I have to admit that I'm slightly baffled at the evangelical fervour of Dr Dogmeat, and I ask him 'Why the obsession with penises?'

He says, 'Only those who've tried it can tell you what the effect is.'

Which makes it a small and elusive study group, I'd guess. But I'm certainly not going to criticize someone for eating one hunk of protein over another so I stumble, shell-shocked, back to the kitchen.

Dogmeat is very tough and has to be boiled in unseasoned water for a couple of hours before use. I ask Chin if he remembers the actual dog we're cooking, but he says that there are far too many for him to have any personal connections.

Once the meat is boiled, inexplicably, Dr Dogmeat takes over from the women in the kitchen and shows me how to make dogmeat stew. He slices a variety of oriental greens, spring onions, cabbage, leeks and taro and lays these in a wide, flat pan. He takes the belly cut of the dog and pulls the ribs out, and then cuts the remaining meat and fat into long slices. The meat is laid on the vegetables, and red chilli pepper sauce is spread over the top. Over this is poured a litre or so of fatty stock, and the whole lot is placed on a portable gas burner on the table for guests to mix in extra condiments.

So this is bosintang, the infamous Korean dogmeat stew that has caused outrage across the Western world, nearly lost Seoul the Olympics and the football World Cup, and provides something like 60 million meals across Korea every year. It smells good, like a rich pork stew, and I sit cross-legged next to Chin and Dr Dogmeat looking at it in silence whilst three different TV crews film my reactions. I feel quite defensive, and I don't want to give away any emotions. I start having second thoughts about coming here at all – what good can possibly come of this? If I eat the dog, I will upset most people I know, but if I don't eat it I'll be a hypocrite, throwing away all my long-gestated carnivorous principles.

You could cut the atmosphere with the Sword of Damocles that I can just make out hanging from the rafters.

To dissolve a bit of the tension, I ask Dr Dogmeat why he thinks Westerners care so much about the eating of dog.

He responds with a startling viciousness: 'It doesn't matter what you think about it. Just leave us alone. The problem starts when you tell us to change our ways to match yours.'

I'm taken aback because I've been careful not to express any opinions yet – I'm here as a journalist, so all I've done is ask questions. My dislike for Dr Dogmeat deepens instantly, and I now realize that there's only one course of action open to me: I need to wait. I can't make a decision this big on my first day in Korea.

I announce (a little too grandly) that although I think that Chin's animals have been decently raised, when you've got the world's
TV
cameras pointing at you, the issue of eating dog is about more than just this one meal. 'I can't make my decision until I've found out more, and in fact I won't make my final decision until our last day in Korea, but you're all welcome back to film it.'

There's a sigh of disappointment in the restaurant, disturbed only by Dr Dogmeat, who takes my comments as a signal for him to throw himself with gay abandon on the bosintang, and he proceeds to slurp it down noisily, presumably trying to annoy me.

Noryangjin Fish Market

We visit the vast Noryangjin fish market in central Seoul. I find fish markets mesmerizing, and what's unique about Noryangjin is the mezzanine level of restaurants above the market where they will cook fish that you've bought downstairs, and serve you rice, beer and kimchi (that stinky fermented cabbage) to go with it.

This would be great, except for the fact that here in Korea they have a fishy speciality all of their own, and it's one that gives me the willies. Sea slug. It's the single most revolting thing I can think of eating, and I've always worried about the day that someone puts one in front of me. Well, wouldn't you know it: today's the day.

I don't chase extreme foods on purpose, but I do like food to be an adventure. I believe that in a world that's having tremendous difficulty feeding its population, we can't turn down any foodstuff – who knows what could turn out to be the new potato, the new rice, corn or wheat (this is also one of the many reasons why I think it ought to be OK to cat dog). So I've eaten civet cat in Burma, Yak's knob in China, ant larvae in Mexico and rat in India. But for some reason, sea slug has always been my culinary nemesis.

With a feeling of dread, I choose a plump-looking sea slug from a nice old lady in the fish market. It wriggles around as I hold it, and it's knobbly and slimy and gruesome and yuck and I can't believe this is edible and I gag involuntarily. I hand over some money and take the slug, along with a vicious but tasty-looking king crab as a side order, upstairs to the restaurants.

I hand over my booty and watch the preparation: apparently it's always eaten raw. Well that's just great. But it gets worse: the lady takes my sea slug out of the bag and chops the end off (I don't know if it's the head or the tail, or indeed whether or not a sea slug possesses either), causing it to wriggle frantically. Then she does something grotesque: she squeezes it to push out the intestinal tract, then hands them to me, saying, 'This is the best bit.'

Oh. My. God.

I have just discovered something worse than eating sea slug: eating raw sea slug intestines whilst the eviscerated sea slug looks on. I am surely going to hell.

I put the stringy intestine in my mouth and chew. Every atom in my body is willing me to vomit, but somehow I manage to persevere and eat the thing. It tastes slightly sweet, but the main sensation is the sliminess and stringiness of the texture. It's almost impossible to bite because it slips around your teeth too much. Urgh. Finally, with a few slurps, it's gone. I'm not proud – in fact I'm a little disgusted with myself – but then a sense of victory sweeps over me and I realize I've conquered my culinary demons. After this, what food is there to be afraid of?

My chef chops the still-wriggling slug into slices that look spookily like deep-fried onion rings. They still twitch and glisten whilst as I sit down crossed-legged to eat them. After the intestines, I feel a cloud has parted, and I can eat the slug itself with gay abandon. The slices taste like raw squid – ever so slightly fishy, but clean and fresh. It's all about texture here: they are tremendously tough, a cross between cartilage and car tyre, and when you finally manage to get your teeth into them, they crunch. I get the sense that NASA could develop a new generation of Kevlar from these fellas. By now, though, I'm blooded, and I wolf them down as fast as anyone can wolf down car tyre.

Later, we drive to the town of Taejun to visit Dr Lee, a renowned expert in herbal medicine, who gives me acupuncture and tells me a load of hokum about which herbs and vegetables are good for a set of imaginary ailments that she dreams up for me. She tells me that seaweed cleans the blood, mushrooms are aphrodisiacs and all sorts of other snake-oil nonsense, then announces that I am a cold person, and I need to eat dogmeat to heat me up. I'm probably cold because I'm trying to restrain my deep loathing of complementary medicine and herbal fruit-cakery, but I stay polite to her throughout.

KAPS

I am still on the hunt for dog-eating opinions in Korea so I drop in on the Korean Animal Protection Society (KAPS). If anyone should be against dog-eating, it's these people. And the founder, Soo, wastes no time in introducing me to the exuberantly friendly dogs she's rescued from dealers and showing me photos of abuse. The photos are truly-gruesome – dogs that have clearly been beaten and then hanged, dogs being abused and cruelly transported. But the odd thing is that most of these photos look very old. In fact, they look as though they were shot in the 1960s. I've only got hairstyles and clothes to go on (and admittedly this is Korea we're talking about here), but it looks very much as though the worst abuse happened a long time ago.

Then, when I say that I'm trying to work out if it's OK to eat dog, I get a surprise. Instead of an outraged condemnation of the very idea, Soo says, 'It's a personal decision – I can't tell you what to do. However, your behaviour could influence the behaviour of others in a good or bad way. Because it could have a bad influence, I would prefer it if you didn't eat it.'

Soo has stopped a long way short of saying 'no', which is a very Korean thing: much as they hate being embarrassed, they hate embarrassing other people too. Blimey, how do decisions get made around here?

The Dark Side of the
Dogmeat Industry

Dr Dogmeat contacts me again (which surprises me after his outburst last time), and offers to take me to another dog farm that functions as an auction house, farm and slaughterhouse. I eagerly agree and meet him at another secret location. Again, I'm told not to reveal the name of the place.

I arrive at a farm that's very different from Yong Bok Chin's operation. It's scrappy, filthy, chaotic and crumbling. A small auction is in progress when I arrive, and several cages lie around crammed with dogs. Some of the cages aren't big enough for the dogs to sit in, let alone stand up in, so they lie there looking terrified. Much as Chin's dogs expressed joy by wagging tails, jumping and barking, these express fear by curling tails under themselves, trembling and whimpering. Occasionally they snap at each other and fight for space inside the cages.

The buyers walk on and around the cages, squeezing flesh through the wire to check the quality of the meat. The dogs go for around $250 each. When the animals are bought, they are dragged out of the cages and thrown in the back of another cage on a truck. One Alsatian is so terrified at its treatment that it soils itself as it's being shoved upside down into a cage. I tell the owner that it's a cruel way to treat an animal but he says, 'We have no choice – if they're not treated like that, people will get bitten.'

I take a wander around the dog cages that house about 50–60 dogs. This place is hideous, and most of the dogs look ill and disturbed. They sit in piles of their own excrement and their coats are ragged. Most are thin and show signs of stress such as repetitive actions and twitches, and they cower away from me as I walk past. I'm beginning to feel sick with disgust, so I'm almost grateful when I'm taken to see the slaughterhouse.

It gets worse. The owner shows me how they slaughter the dogs: they put them in an iron cage and clip a wire to it that's connected to the positive wire on a plug, then using an iron bar, they complete the circuit to the negative wire. The cage is basically connected directly to the mains electricity, the fuses are overridden and the dog is electrocuted. The owner plugs it in and shows me – it can clearly get messy because the cage and the bar are a bit rusty, so there are lots of sparks, and the connection is a bit tricky to maintain. He claims that the dog takes four or five seconds to die, and altogether it sounds like a dreadful way to go. Oh, and all this is done in full view of the other dogs.

I ask the owner if this place is legal, and he says, 'According to the law, it's neither legal or illegal. They're not telling us to kill dogs, but they're not stopping us either.'

This place is horrific, and I say as much to Dr Dogmeat. I wouldn't eat any meat – dog or chicken – that I knew had been raised in conditions this dreadful. What was he thinking bringing a BBC journalist to a place like this when the issue is so sensitive? His reply is to tell me not to use the footage that's been shot, but it's too late for that.

I leave the farm, and 200 metres down the road I spot a beef farm, so I stop to take a look. Perhaps I've taken things out of context – maybe all livestock in Korea is raised in grim conditions. I poke my head over the barn gate and I am greeted by an extraordinary sight: the cows are listening to Korean ballads played to them on a stereo (I swear I'm not making this up); they are in large, clean, smart barns with ample room, fresh straw and proper ventilation. There are calves and mature cows living in conditions that I can only marvel at. They look healthy, happy and secure. You couldn't engineer a greater contrast if you wanted to.