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FILE PHOTO: Vendors and customers at the Rason Market in North Hamgyong Province. (Daily NK)

Food shortages appear to be growing more severe for people in the city of Rason, home of North Korea’s first free economic zone, Daily NK has learned. The city community was recently scandalized by the news that a local family made soup out of a pet dog dug out of the ground.

“People have been growing more anxious about the scarcity of food following the recent news that a Rason family boiled up the body of a pet dog as a meal. It’s awful to contemplate the level of hunger that would drive someone to eat a dead pet dog,” a reporting partner in North Hamgyong Province told Daily NK on Mar. 10, speaking on condition of anonymity. 

According to the reporting partner, North Korean officials began caring for pet dogs in the late 1980s as a way of flaunting their power and wealth. The practice began to spread through the general population in the mid-1990s.

While dog meat is widely eaten in North Korea, there is a strong sense that pet dogs should not be eaten. That is why locals were so shocked to learn that a family recently consumed a pet dog that had been buried by a Chinese resident.

“Early this month, a resident of Rason saw a Chinese person burying a pet dog on a hill nearby. That evening, they dug up the dog’s body and brought it home to eat with their family. The story spread through the city like wildfire,” the reporting partner said.

Most Rason locals who encountered the tale could not hide their astonishment and had trouble imagining how hard up the family must be to engage in such behavior.

“This incident sums up how bad the food shortage has gotten. Discontent is growing among people fed up with the government for boasting that happy North Koreans have no reason to envy other countries while not taking any actual steps to relieve the food shortage,” the reporting partner said.

Translated by David Carruth. Edited by Robert Lauler. 

Daily NK works with a network of reporting partners who live inside North Korea. Their identities remain anonymous due to security concerns. More information about Daily NK’s reporting partner network and information gathering activities can be found on our FAQ page here.  

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