First published August 24, 2020.
In August 2020, South Korea's Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported, citing an unnamed source, that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un had ordered in July that pet dogs in Pyongyang be handed over, and that some were being sent to state zoos or sold to dog-meat restaurants. The claim was never independently confirmed. North Korea did not comment, no photos or documents emerged, and the story should be read as an unverified report against a real background of food shortages.
What the report claimed
According to the Chosun Ilbo account, repeated by the New York Post, the New Zealand Herald and many other outlets, Kim had criticised keeping pet dogs as "a tainted trend by bourgeois ideology." The anonymous source said authorities had identified households in Pyongyang with dogs and were pressuring owners to give them up or confiscating them.
The source also described resentment in the capital. Ordinary families, it was said, raised livestock to survive, while officials and the wealthy kept dogs as pets. Some outlets suggested the real motive was to provide meat or to defuse anger about the economy.
Each of these points rests on one anonymous source passed through several layers of reporting. That does not make them false, but it means the story cannot be treated as established fact.
Why reports from North Korea are hard to verify
North Korea is one of the most closed countries in the world. Foreign journalists cannot report freely, phones are monitored, and most information reaches the outside through defectors, smugglers, or specialist outlets such as Daily NK that rely on contacts inside the country. South Korean newspapers often publish these accounts quickly.
Some such stories later prove accurate; others turn out to be exaggerated or wrong. Famous examples include repeated rumours in 2020 that Kim was dead or in a coma, which ended when he appeared on state media. A useful rule: when a claim about North Korea comes from one unnamed source and has no images, satellite evidence or official confirmation, treat it as "reported" rather than "confirmed".
The real food crisis in 2020
The background to the story was real. In early 2020 North Korea sealed its border with China, its main trading partner, to keep out COVID-19. Trade collapsed, and imports of food, fertiliser and goods fell sharply. Summer floods and typhoons in August and September 2020 then damaged crops.
Before the pandemic, a 2019 UN assessment had already found that about 40% of the population faced food shortages after the worst harvest in over a decade. UN agencies estimated that around 10 million people, out of roughly 25 million, needed food assistance. The border closure made it far harder for aid groups to work in the country, and most international staff left in 2020 and 2021.
In June 2021, Kim himself publicly admitted that the country's food situation was "getting tense", a rare admission from the leadership.
Memories of the 1990s famine
North Koreans remember an earlier disaster. After Soviet aid ended in the early 1990s, the economy collapsed. Floods in 1995 and 1996 and a drought in 1997 destroyed harvests, and the state food distribution system broke down. The famine of roughly 1994 to 1999, which the government called the "Arduous March", killed somewhere between several hundred thousand and about two to three million people, depending on the estimate. Many researchers place the toll between 600,000 and one million.
That history explains why any sign of food stress in North Korea draws attention, and why stories about seizing animals for food can sound believable even when they are unproven.
Dog meat in North and South Korea
Dog meat, known in North Korea as dangogi ("sweet meat"), is legal there and promoted by the state as part of Korean food culture. A dog-meat soup was even listed as a regional intangible cultural heritage in 2022. Still, most North Koreans do not eat it regularly, and keeping pet dogs, once rare, had been growing among better-off families in Pyongyang.
In South Korea, attitudes moved the other way. Eating dog meat declined steadily, especially among younger people, and in January 2024 the National Assembly passed a law banning the breeding and slaughter of dogs for food, with a grace period ending in 2027.
A myth about Britain's wartime pets
Some versions of this story compared North Korea to Britain before the Second World War, saying hundreds of thousands of pets were put down there to save food. The comparison is misleading. The British pet massacre happened in the first days after war was declared in September 1939, not before. About 750,000 cats and dogs were killed, roughly a quarter of the country's pets.
The main drivers were fear of bombing and panic about coping in wartime, encouraged by a government advisory leaflet. Food was one worry, but there was no shortage at the time, and historians describe the killings as largely unnecessary. Battersea Dogs Home, by contrast, cared for around 145,000 dogs during the war.
What we can say for sure
- Confirmed: North Korea faced serious food shortages in 2020, made worse by the closed border and floods.
- Confirmed: A South Korean newspaper reported a pet-dog confiscation order, citing one anonymous source.
- Unconfirmed: That such an order was issued, how widely it was enforced, and what happened to the dogs.
For readers, the wider lesson is to look for the source behind a dramatic headline. With North Korea, a cautious "reportedly" is often the most honest word available.
Sources: India.com, August 2020 (citing Chosun Ilbo); Wikipedia: North Korean famine; Wikipedia: Dog meat; Wikipedia: British pet massacre.
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