Olympic Skier Closes A Dog Farm In South Korea And Takes Them Home

Gus Kenworth, a freestyle skier who was competing in the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, talked a South Korean dog breeder into closing his farm. This stopped something terrible from happening to the pups.

Gus has used video games to bring attention to the cruel way dogs are treated in South Korea. He worked with HSI to convince the farmer to shut down his farm, free the 90 dogs, and send them to the US and Canada.

That is, almost all dogs. Gus kept one of them for himself. He named it Beemo.

“I have no right to make people here live by Western values. But the way these animals are treated is cruel, and culture should never be an excuse for being cruel.”

People know that Gus saved dogs while he was in the Olympics. During the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, he stopped five stray dogs from running around the city.

Dog meat has been eaten in Korea for a long time. It is used in dishes that are said to bring back virility. But the practice is still controversial because people worry about animal rights and health.

South Korea passed its first law to protect animals in May 1991, but it never made it illegal to kill animals violently. Instead, it only made it illegal to kill animals for their meat.

Even so, the Livestock Processing Act of 1962 doesn’t count dog meat as livestock, unlike beef, pig, or chicken. Because of this, dogs are killed in horrible ways like beating, electrocution, and strangulation. Also, there are no rules about how to kill dogs for food.