publive-image

North Korea is facing a food supply crisis and its controversial leader has reportedly ordered his people to hand over their pet dogs so they can be turned into meat for restaurants, says a shocking report.

According to a report in New Zealand Herald, the move by the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is thought to be aimed at quelling the rising discontent among the public as the economic situation in the secretive country is crumbling and food shortages have become a huge worry.

Kim Jong-un also seems to be playing to the sentiments of the ordinary and poor class as the latter own only pigs and other livestock while it is generally wealthy in the nation's capital Pyongyang who maintain domesticated pets including dogs. This pet ownership is also seen by North Korean authorities as a symbol of capitalist "decadence", say reports. 

According to South Korea's Chosun Ilbo newspaper, a source reported that Kim banned ownership of pet dogs and in July denounced having a dog at home as "a tainted trend of bourgeois ideology".

"Authorities have identified households with pet dogs and are forcing them to give them up or forcefully confiscating them and putting them down," the source added. "Some of the dogs are sent to state-run zoos or sold to dog meat restaurants".

Pet owners are "cursing Kim Jong-un behind his back", but there is little they can do, according to the source.

"Ordinary people raise pigs and livestock on their porches, but high-ranking officials and the wealthy own pet dogs, which stoked some resentment," the source told the South Korean newspaper, according to the NZHerald.

According to the Daily Mail, a recent report by the UN said up to 60 percent of North Koreans face “widespread food shortages.” In recent weeks, heavy rain and flooding have sparked concern about crop damage and food supplies in the isolated country.

North Korea’s national Red Cross Society is the only organization with access to all nine provinces, and more than 43,000 volunteers have been working alongside health teams on COVID-19 prevention efforts as well as helping flood-related work, said Antony Balmain of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

“Hundreds of homes have been damaged and large areas of rice fields have been submerged due to heavy rain and some flash flooding,” Balmain said, according to Reuters.