Greg Scarlatoiu, executive director of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK), which documents the atrocities of the Kim regime, said it was a “ludicrous” rule.
He said: “What should I do with the dog I love so much? I can’t just kill it, and I can’t just abandon it.
“The Kim regime criminalises normal behaviour, including visiting a relative in a neighbouring village without a travel permit, crossing the border without regime approval, or possessing a religious book.”
“The ongoing crackdown on pet dog ownership as non-socialist behaviour – this attempt to break the multi-millennial human-canine bond by ideological decree – is the epitome of ludicrous interdiction.”
The practice of keeping dogs as pets was a late arrival in North Korea, where residents mostly kept dogs to guard their homes before the 2000s.
The source said: “There have always been families who had cats to catch mice, but there weren’t many families with dogs.
“But that number has gradually increased, and recently there’s been a noticeable rise in foreign breeds of dogs such as Pomeranians and Shih Tzus, which used to be a rare sight in North Korea.”
Dog meat has historically been used across the whole of the Korean Peninsula but it has become increasingly controversial in the South.
