hankyoreh

Park Geun-hye’s Jindo dogs Saerom and Heemang inside the Blue House in 2013. (provided by the Blue House)

When Park moved to her private home in Seoul’s Gangnam District on Mar. 12, she didn’t bring her pet dogs Saerom and Heemang (the names mean “new” and “hope”) and their seven pups. An animal rights group has accused Park of abandoning her pets, and a group in Busan has even lodged a legal complaint, accusing Park of violating the Animal Protection Act. The Blue House said that it’s looking into ways to find a new home for the pets.

On Mar. 12, animal rights group CARE posted on social media that it wanted to help find a new home for the Jindo dogs. “Every year, between 80,000 and 90,000 pets are abandoned in this country with an annual social cost of 10 billion won [US$8.71 million]. For the former leader of this country to not take responsibility for the nine Jindo dogs that she personally adopted and bred is basically abandonment,” CARE said.

“We want to help out so that these Jindo dogs are not sent to a local animal shelter or to the wrong home where they would live an unhappy life. Since there are not many people in this country who can raise large dogs, they’re often neglected or abandoned, and many Jindo dogs are slaughtered for their meat. If even the dogs of the former president fall victim to such a fate, South Korea’s national brand and image will suffer enormous harm,” CARE said as it asked Blue House officials to consider putting the Jindo dogs up for adoption.

Park Geun-hye with the five puppies born to Jindo dogs Saerom and Heemang in 2015. The Blue House used the dogs for publicity

Amid the growing controversy, the Busan Alliance for Preventing Animal Abuse announced via the e-People online petition system on Mar. 13 that it had asked the police to investigate Park for abandoning her pets. “It was a clear case of abandonment for Park, once her circumstances had changed, to leave behind all the pets she had been raising,” the group wrote.

Park is closely associated with abandoned dogs. As a presidential candidate for the Saenuri Party in 2012, Park responded to an inquiry from a civic group about her “animal policy” by declaring that she would “personally raise abandoned animals at the Blue House.” But Park’s promise to welcome abandoned dogs into the Blue House came to nothing when she accepted the Jindo dogs Saerom and Huimang as presents from her neighbors in Seoul‘s Samseong neighborhood when she was inaugurated as president in 2013.

The Blue House is reportedly interested in the idea of putting the dogs up for adoption. “We’re looking into appropriate ways of finding a home for the dogs, such as posting a public notice. We’re thinking about ways of preserving the Jindo dog bloodline,” a source at the Blue House said in a telephone interview with the Hankyoreh on Mar. 13.

By Ko Han-sol, Nam Jong-young and Choi Hye-jung, staff reporters

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