(Korea)The politics of eating dogs

[Guest guest]

Japan Today Discussion

Post Your Opinion!

 

http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=comment & id=202

 

The politics of eating dogs

 

John Feffer

 

The line dividing acceptable from unacceptable meat is

sometimes a fine one.

 

While vegetarians naturally reject meat of all kinds,

everyone else 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 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:

South 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.

Throughout the 2002 World Cup taking place in both

Japan and South Korea, many journalists looking for

" color " have delivered many 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 Korean 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 in full swing.

 

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 Aug 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, Myanmar, 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 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.

 

One reason is the relative obscurity of Korean food in

the United States. There are Chinese restaurants in

virtually every neighborhood from Gainesville to

Anchorage. Japanese sushi can be found in the food

courts of malls in landlocked states. Korean food may

well be the next wave after Thai or Vietnamese, but

for the time being it remains too " ethnic " for most

Americans. It uses too many unusual ingredients, such

as acorns, bracken, organ meats, bellflower roots,

mung beans, dried fish, and pine needles. It is too

spicy: Gochujang, hot red-pepper paste, has not yet

caught on in a market that prefers jalapeño or Scotch

bonnet.

 

And ultimately Korean food is too pungent. Americans

are so wary of the strong odor of Korean pickled

cabbage (kimchi) that the Korean corporation Doosan is

developing an odorless variety for the U.S. market.

The pervasive American scorn for this pungency has

prompted many Koreans to adopt an apologetic tone.

 

My partner once sat down for dinner with Korean

Americans in Detroit and ordered one of her favorite

dishes, toenjang chigae, a fermented stew. Her hosts

were shocked and delighted. " We never order that dish

when we eat out here in America for fear of offending

other diners, " they told her.

 

Other ethnic groups have experienced the same problem.

At the turn of the twentieth century, when Italians

were not yet considered " white, " their food was

shunned for its liberal use of garlic and strong

cheeses.

 

Jewish and African-American preferences for certain

parts of animals (pigs' feet, derma, chitlins) were

derided as backwards, often by status-conscious Jews

and blacks. It took a century before Chinese-Americans

became established enough for Chinese food to wend its

way into the culinary mainstream. Indeed, it was once

far more common for urban mythologizers to claim that

Chinatown boasted no strays.

 

Criticism of people, particularly of new immigrants,

often masquerades as criticism of cuisine. Bardot is

notorious for her xenophobic attitudes and her support

of French far-right politician Jean-Marie Le Pen. As

Frank Wu writes in his new book " Yellow, " the French

actress " connects mistreatment of animals with an

influx of non-Western peoples. " Bardot could not be

more transparent about her feelings. " A cultured

country does not allow its people to eat dogs, " she

has said.

 

The prejudice is not simply cultural. Animal-rights

activists are also suggesting that an industrialized

country does not allow its people to eat dogs. The

complaints against Korean dog eating began in earnest

when the Olympics came to South Korea, signaling its

arrival on the international stage (just as the 1964

Tokyo Olympics heralded the new Japan).

 

In 1996, scrutiny of Korea's dog-eating practices

intensified when the country joined the Organization

of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the

richest two dozen countries in the world. Membership

in the charmed circle of industrialized nations

requires adherence to standard economic practices.

 

Are there cultural expectations that accompany

membership as well, just as certain country clubs that

finally accept Jews or African-Americans still expect

the new members to comport themselves according to

Waspish rules of decorum? Laos and Myanmar are not yet

in the OECD club, so no one has bothered to launch any

campaigns against their dog-eating practices.

 

Globalization has made diverse cuisines more

available, especially in high-end markets. Tapas,

rooibos, bacalao, tagines, mole, and adobo are

circling the world as the barriers to food migration

are falling. But not all foods are equal, and certain

culinary practices among industrialized countries are

on the wane.

 

Consumption of whale meat in Japan has fallen

precipitously since World War II. Cat, which was once

eaten in parts of Spain, can no longer be found on the

menu there. Smoked dog ham and dried dog meat were

once popular in Switzerland but no longer. In

globalization-speak, this might be called

" harmonization " : Difference is tolerated only within

certain parameters.

 

Because the French define and continue to refine haute

cuisine, their unusual eating habits do not receive

equivalent scrutiny. Not only is France famous for its

escargots and grenouilles, but its menu also features

lamproie, oursins, and aitances (lamprey, sea urchin

gonads, and fish sperm).

 

As the self-proclaimed center of the culinary world,

the French have the cultural strength to resist any

attempts to homogenize their tastes. The world, after

all, travels to Paris to learn how to cook (a la

cordon bleu) and how to eat (a la Michelin). If the

French ate dog meat as readily as they eat horse meat,

Korea would not be the target of so much hostility.

 

So it all boils down to snobbery. Poshintang is not

haute cuisine. Even in Korea, where a bowl is quite

expensive, dog soup exists at the margins, associated

with older traditions, both culinary and medical. In

its postwar struggle to make a place for itself at the

global table, Korea has left poshintang behind.

 

Countryside culture is popular in Seoul, with

restaurants serving makkoli (rice liquor) and

country-style pancakes, but it is a carefully

sanitized version of the countryside, not unlike

Cracker Barrel's appropriation of down-home cooking in

the United States.

 

The poshintang restaurants, unregulated and

unrepentant, provide a glimpse of an older Korea that

has somehow managed to survive Japanese colonialism,

World War II, the Korean War, several dictatorships,

and the latest wave of globalization sweeping Korean

culture. I ate poshintang in a small restaurant on a

tiny side street in Seoul. Around the corner, on the

main thoroughfare, young Koreans favored Dunkin'

Donuts, Japanese fast food, and Korean hamburger and

pizza joints, all considerably hipper by Seoul

standards than something associated with Chinese

medicine and questionable slaughtering standards. In

the long run, poshintang's greatest enemy is not

Brigitte Bardot but Colonel Sanders.

 

The Korean response to the controversy is instructive.

Many Koreans, even those who wouldn't touch the stuff,

defend dog soup against the onslaught of

Westernization: It may not be good soup, but it is our

soup. (Much of the anger expressed on the Internet is

in Korean, but you can get the flavor of it at

www.noorung.org).

 

In the United States, meanwhile, Korean-Americans have

objected to media depictions of Koreans as somehow

animalistic. They believe that there is plenty enough

in Korean cuisine, from beef barbecue (bulgogi) to

mixed vegetables and rice (bibimbap), to define

identity without resorting to a defense of this

minority preference, which is decidedly not part of

Korean-American culture.

 

Both Koreans and Korean-Americans, whatever their

personal feelings about poshintang, came together

recently to achieve a common goal: elicit an apology

from Jay Leno. When judges at the Salt Lake City

Olympics disqualified Korean speed skater Kim Dong

Sung in the 1,500-meter final and awarded American

Apolo Anton Ohno the gold medal, Leno joked on " The

Tonight Show " that the disappointed Korean might have

kicked his dog, then eaten it. Korean-Americans were

not happy with this feeble witticism.

 

" We wanted to be productive and take a restrained

approach, " said Songbae Lee, Washington director of

the Korean-American Coalition. " We wanted to educate

Jay Leno about the Asian-American community. "

Prominent Korean-Americans participated in a

conference call in which Leno said that he wouldn't

have told the joke if he could have predicted the

reaction of the Korean-American community.

 

Another, more combative strategy is also afoot. The

MCIC Group — a Philadelphia law firm that is also

heading up class-action lawsuits in cases involving

Japanese slave labor during World War II and the U.S.

Army killings of civilians at Nogun-ri in the Korean

War — is demanding an apology and monetary damages

from Leno and NBC.

 

According to MCIC attorney Justin Kim, more than

50,000 Koreans have signed on as plaintiffs in the

libel suit. Outsiders who think Koreans thin-skinned

don't understand " han " and Korean history. " Han " is a

difficult-to-translate Korean word that means,

roughly, a deeply felt sense of injustice. Koreans

feel " han " about their divided peninsula or the

experience of Japanese colonialism. Racist broadsides

against poshintang bring up feelings of " han " in much

the same way that the epithet " garlic-stinking " might

enrage a certain generation of Italian-Americans.

 

But the eating of dog has always been a serious

matter, even before Leno and Bardot entered the

picture. According to scholar Frederick Simoons,

author of the classic " Eat Not This Flesh, " the people

of the Egyptian city Cynopolis long ago fought a civil

war against their neighbors from Oxyrhynchus.

Cynopolians, as you might guess from their name,

worshipped dogs. Their neighbors ate them.

 

Let's hope that the current standoff between those who

do and do not eat poshintang, between Leno and the

50,000 plaintiffs, between Koreans struggling to

preserve their identity and a globalized world intent

on harmonization, stops short of out-and-out conflict.

In the best of all possible worlds, we should be able

to have our dogs and occasionally eat them, too.

 

John Feffer is a freelance writer based in Maryland.

(AlterNet)

 

June 22, 2002

 

 

 

 

 

 

- Official partner of 2002 FIFA World Cup

http://fifaworldcup.