Frequently Asked Questions
to KoreanDogs.org
🐶 What can I do to help?
There are a number of ways in which you can help fight against this cruelty.
The most important action you can take is calling the South Korean Embassy in your country and speaking out against this atrocity. Phone numbers and talking points can be found here: https://koreandogs.org/what-you-can-do/contacts-for-protest/call-south-korean-embassy/
We would love to hear about the responses you receive from the Embassy. Please tell us about your experience!
Signing and sharing all petitions is also a critical part of our effort: https://koreandogs.org/petitions/
For more ways to help in the fight against this brutal industry, please visit the “What you can do” page here: https://koreandogs.org/what-you-can-do/
You’ll want to stay up-to-date on the news and calls to action, so don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter: https://koreandogs.org/.
🐶 Do petitions really work?
e-People Petition:
The e-People petition is the South Korean government’s official petition site and your petition will receive a response from the Korean government. Anyone from all countries can file a petition using the e-People petition. I have filed about 3,000 petitions on e-People already and have received responses to most of them.
📌 It’s quite simple to file e-People petitions, but you can find help on (1) how to file e-People petition and (2) how to check the status of your e-People petitions on our website.
Please help save millions of Korean animals from horrific cruelty by taking this action today. 🙏
To file e-People petition, go to any of our campaign pages, and file e-people petition using our “Suggested message” or your own words.
👉 Need help with filing the e-People petition? Click HERE.
👉 Need help with checking the status of your e-People petitions? Click HERE.
Other online petitions such as Change.org and Avaaz.org:
Petitions can be effective by showing the Koreans how many people have seen and care about our issues.
I understand that some people are wary about adding their signature to a petition, as there are ones out there which have been created without much care; and, in some cases, the petition process is not followed through properly with delivery of the collected signatures to the petitioned party. However, the petitions which we recommend are ones that we have created ourselves or ones from people/organisations that we trust; and we always make sure our petitions get delivered to the petitioned targets.
We also utilize free resources, such as social media, as much as possible, as we are a volunteer group and do not take donations.
🐶 Can you send me leaflets to distribute?
We no longer send out leaflets. If you would like to print our leaflets to hand out, please contact us and we would be happy to send you our high resolution leaflet files for printing.
🐶 Where can I get or buy a KoreanDogs.org t-shirt?
You can get our t-shirts only at our San Francisco Fisherman’s Wharf leafleting events. At these events, if you are volunteering, you will get a t-shirt for free, but otherwise, the suggested donation for t-shirts is $5 USD (our cost for each shirt). Sorry, we do not give away or sell t-shirts, as we don’t have the resources to provide free products nor the volunteers who can handle the shipping.
🐶 What about the chickens, cows and pigs?
For answers to these questions, we have FAQ pages we are sharing from the Korean animal welfare groups.
https://koreandogs.org/faq-kara-1/
https://koreandogs.org/faq-kara-2/
https://koreandogs.org/faq-pda/
https://koreandogs.org/faq-by-kara/ (In Korean)
🐶 I want to organize a protest. Can you send me posters and banners?
Thank you for organizing the protest. Protesting is one of the most important and effective ways to create awareness and speak out for the Korean dogs. We would be glad to send you leaflets to hand out at your event, free of charge if you live within the U.S. Sorry, but we cannot send free leaflets outside of the U.S. due to the high cost of shipping. We do not have posters and banners we can send. You and your volunteers would need to make them yourselves. You can find the photos you may use to make posters from our online photo album. Click HERE to see the photos. If you would like to use our banner for your event, we can help you order them from our printer, but you would need to pay for it. It costs around $65 (include shipping costs) and 8 ft x 3 ft in size. Click HERE to see our banner.
🐶 Why don’t the people who are filming this cruelty, do something to stop it?
These dogs are the property of the dog farmer and are kept on private property: a member of the public has no legal right to enter someone’s private property without permission, nor can that person ‘take’ the dog, without permission, as that would be theft.
The farmer makes a living out of breeding and selling dogs: the farmer may be willing to sell his dogs (to the person filming etc.), but the farmer would require the same price for it that he would otherwise get for the dog at a market – why would he sell it at a loss? Therefore: a) the person trying to buy the dog(s) would need a large amount of money; b) they would then need to have the facilities to care for these dogs (and the money to do so); and c) just removing those few dogs would not stop the dog meat trade – the farmer would just breed some more (note: estimated 2.5 million dogs a year go into the dog-meat trade).
🐶 So, what is the answer? Who can stop it?
The only way to stop the appalling suffering that is happening to these dogs (and cats) is to bring about a permanent end to the dog and cat-meat trades. And the Korean Government and authorities are the only people who can do this.
🐶 So, why aren’t the Korean Government doing anything?
The Korean Government will not do anything unless worldwide pressure is brought on them to end these trades. And the way to do this is by letting them know how we all feel about these abhorrent trades; there are many ways to do this: please click HERE for “what you can do” page for more detailed information on suggested action etc.
🐶 Why do you show such graphic images with your campaigns? Don’t you think you would get a better response if you used more positive images and stories?
Whilst more and more people across the world are becoming aware of the atrocities carried out in the various stages of the dog and cat meat trades, in countries such as South Korea, there are still many people who have no knowledge of the brutality used and the extent and frequency of the suffering experienced by the animals involved. And, to some people, objecting to different cultures/people eating dogs is seen as ‘hypocritical’, because they simply cannot imagine (or have never considered) the appalling treatment and aberrant cruelty inflicted on the living animals – as such: ‘seeing is believing’.
We therefore feel that our approach and selection of images and links used to get the message across in our campaigns will be the most effective in raising awareness and getting concerned supporters to take action.
🐶 You have so many petitions. Can you automate it so that we can sign them all at once?
We do have a lot of petitions as it is one of the most effective ways to raise awareness, gather support and show the Korean Government just how many people are actively opposed to dog-meat consumption. The online petition platforms we are using are Change.org, Avaaz and CARE2 because, not only are they free resources, but they are large and most successful. They provide functions that are useful for our campaign, but they do not offer the functionality of allowing you to sign multiple petitions at once. Each petition should be individually read and then signed and although we recognize that, as we have so many petitions, it is very time consuming for our supporters, we are not able to change this. However, your voice is very important because your voice is the only one these animals have.
🐶 Wouldn’t it be better if you had only one petition, instead of so many different ones? That way, you would probably get millions of signatures.
Although it seems like a good way forward to create just one petition, to attract many more signatures, we do not believe it would achieve our goal as effectively.
As an example, consider our petition: https://www.change.org/p/boycott-pyeongchang-2018-winter-olympics-in-south-korea-a-dog-eating-nation
This petition, which has been running for nearly six years, has received short of 500 thousand signatures; a figure which has only, in recent months, doubled and been reached with the significant help of change.org, who promote it for us free of charge.
Our strategy, as a volunteer group, which operates without donations, is to maximize free resources so we can flood social media with this issue, which is why we put so much effort into creating as many wide-spread campaigns and petitions as we can.
It would not be possible to cover all of the various issues surrounding the dog meat trade, and the detail required to inform and persuade the different targets, with just one generic petition. It would not make for effective campaigning, if we do not tailor the wording to the individual organization or persons being petitioned.
🐶 I have sent emails to addresses given on your web-pages, but many of them ‘bounce’ or have some other message saying they cannot be delivered. Why is this?
There could be several reasons why your emails are returned or not delivered. Your returned email will indicate the reason for the returned email such as “Message blocked”, “The receiver denied your mail.” One suggestion that we would like to make is that you separate your personal email with the petition mailing email account. You can also set up multiple email accounts on gmail for petition email sending.
In addition, the sources from where we have collected these email addresses could be out of date, or incorrect; or may have changed since we collected this information and listed it on our website. We do try our best to keep up-to-date information, but, as you can appreciate, it is not always possible to reflect these changes.
The e-People petition is the most effective of all the actions you can take so please try doing that today. This will never bounce back and you will ALWAYS get a response from the Korean government. www.e-People.go.kr
We also urge everyone to pass on your message by sending postal letters, and making telephone calls. Telephoning is particularly effective as the message cannot be so easily ‘ignored’.
🐶 Your campaigns and website focus on helping dogs but what about cats?
We focus most of our efforts on helping dogs because the scale of the Korean dog meat industry and the amount of suffering involved is so much larger than what exists in the exploitation of cats in Korea. We believe that if the Korean government is forced to end the dog meat trade, this will have a flow-on effect that will end the cat trade as well.
Also, we are a volunteer group that is not based in South Korea. We do not have unlimited resources and we are not able to rescue Korean dogs or cats directly. So our aim and purpose is to support animal rights and rescue groups on the ground in Korea by sharing information and supporting their fundraiser efforts, etc.
However, if you are concerned about cruelty to cats there are many ways you can help to end both dog and cat consumption in South Korea. Please click HERE to take action today.
🐶 Why did you change your online petition site to Avaaz.org? This site is suspicious and many people will not sign.
We have been having problems using Change.org, so we had to go with another option. We have tried CARE2.com but they limited the number of petitions that we can create to 5.
We have seen no information about Avaaz.org to believe that they are not a legitimate site.
Here is an article you may be interested in: https://www.1843magazine.com/content/features/robert-butler/man-behind-avaaz
If you have information about Avaaz.org site being not credible, please forward it to us.
Update: We are now able to create petitions on Change.org again.👍 Big thanks goes out to the folks at Change.org for being supportive of our campaign.
🐶 I tried to sign petitions and I got stuck; I got an error message.
It’s difficult for us to help with troubleshooting your issue without knowing specifically what you’re referring to. Please send us a screenshot of where in the petition process you’re getting stuck; be sure to include the error message you’ve received. If you don’t know how to capture a screenshot of your computer screen, this is a great program that I have found to be very simple to use. You can download it free from here: https://download.cnet.com/Snipping-Tool/3000-20418_4-78360520.html
If your question is regarding the filing of an e-People petition, please refer to our step-by step instructions before you contact us, as you may find the answer there.
👉 How to file e-People petitions -South Korea’s official government online petition: https://koreandogs.org/epeople/
👉 How to check the status of your e-People petitions-South Korea’s official government online petition: https://koreandogs.org/epeople-check/
