Hi All,
I just want to give a kind note of warning for all of you travelling to south korea & vietnam. When visiting a market I hope you have a hard stomach, they butcher dogs and cats horrificly and the sight is awful!!
I honestly would never travel there again, Thailand and Laos are definitely more my cup of tea.
Be careful what you eat as well, South korea also just announced they are going out to hunt for whales again.
A very distraught traveller,
Patricia
Not all of Vietnams markets are slaughter houses for cats and dogs. We saw only one in 2 trips.
I've lived in Korea for 5 years and never once seen an animal being butchered in a market, yes dog is eaten here but it's not that common, most Koreans wil only eat it once in their lives. They would be horrified at the idea of eating cat, and rabbit too for that matter and they find it disgusting that rabbits are eaten in the West.
@OP, that's ridiculous. Cats are never butchered in Korean markets. Koreans don't eat cats (there's a very rare tonic made from cats, but chances of you seeing it are close to 0). Dog meat is sold in some of the very old school markets, but it's not always obvious and I've never seen it being butchered. I've lived in Korea over 3 years. I've been living 2 blocks from an old school market for over a year and go shopping there 3-5 times a week.
@Kraziekatie, I always see pigs getting butchered in the markets around me in Korea. A number of the butcher shops will have the pigs hanging on meat hooks behind the counter. They're not salughtered in the markets, but they are definitely butchered there. Rabbits are eaten in Korea, just not that much. There's a restaurant on my block that serves rabbit soup (and boshingtang and other specialties). I wouldn't say dog isn't common. It might not be out in the open, but there's plenty of restaurants around. Lots of people don't eat dog, but a fair number of folks eat it fairly often.
I live in Shinchang, Asan city and unfortunately there is a restaurant that serves dog soup a few meters away from my house and there are also some dogs farms near by. I've heard that some butchers sell cats to those kind of restaurants, of course I don't know if this is true or not. But I've never seen dogs hanging in the markets.
Where is Shinchang? In China? Do you mean XinJiang?
We get cats in my local market too, not all the time... but frequently.
