To Lee Tae Sik,
Ambassador to the United States from the Republic of Korea,
      I read recently of your country’s winning bid to host the 2018 Winter Olympics. As of now, though, six and a half years prior to the opening ceremonies in Pyeongchang, I’m having difficulty mustering up much enthusiasm for those games. Whatever criteria the International Olympic Committee used to make their final decision in Durban in July, they obviously discounted your country’s government-sanctioned history of animal cruelty; but I haven’t, and I feel a certain obligation to point out to my fellow Americans, especially those considering traveling to South Korea in 2018, the details of that abysmal record.
     Like many Americans, I’ve been aware for years of your reprehensible dog-meat industry. Government officials turn a blind eye to the illegal dog farms and slaughterhouses that are ubiquitous throughout the country. And, even with the so-called “legal” dog operations, the pain and suffering of these sentient beings- animals that are considered loving pets and cherished members of families in our country -goes unchecked.
     Along with this, of course, is the brutal mistreatment of chickens, turkeys, ducks, cattle, sheep, and rabbits in your factory farming system- and even a bear-farming industry! -that have collectively stirred deep feelings of empathy in me for these most vulnerable of creatures. It wasn’t, however, until your actions last January, in regard to the foot and mouth disease outbreak amongst pigs, that I felt compelled to take some action.
     The videos I watched, or barely could watch, at that time showed trucks loading live pigs, stacked six-feet high, being driven to remote burial grounds. They were then thrown from the trucks and bull-dozed into large, open pits. All alive at the time, squealing, terrorized, falling one on top of the other. When this nightmare massacre finally ended, over 1.4 million pigs from all parts of the country were buried alive.
     Besides the obvious immorality and base evilness of such an act, this was a clear breach of World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) guidelines on the killing of animals for disease control purposes, which your country is a signatory to. Article 7.6.1 of the OIE’s General Principles of Animal Welfare states: “When animals are killed for disease control purposes, methods used should result in immediate death or immediate loss of consciousness lasting until death; when loss of consciousness is not immediate, induction of unconsciousness should be non-aversive or the least aversive possible and should not cause avoidable anxiety, pain, distress or suffering in animals.“
     Underlying all of the guidelines are what the OIE calls the internationally recognized five freedoms: 1)freedom from hunger, thirst and malnutrition; 2)freedom from fear and distress; 3)freedom from physical and thermal discomfort; 4)freedom from pain, injury and disease; and 5)freedom to express normal patterns of behavior.
     What compounds the sadness of the situation back in January is that while the massive round-up was being carried out, your government was set to begin implementing within days a country-wide vaccination for foot and mouth disease. Your medical reports at that time showed only a random number of pigs effected by the disease. Millions were perfectly healthy, and the vaccination program would have been the normal course of action.
     In deciding to visit a foreign country, such as attending an Olympics, it’s a given that the traveler will come across an exotic or uncomfortable tradition and custom along the way; most of the time, not enough of an issue to dissuade the pending visitor. However, when it appears that there is a natural inclination, or should I say national inclination, in a country towards something as universally condemned as abuse of animals, it becomes anything but a benign abnormality that needs to be dismissed.
     These were not a few rogue farmers acting in aberrant ways. This was a systematic, government controlled slaughter of the innocents involving state officials, Department of Agricultural workers, veterinarians, and countless conscripted community members. Korean Animal Rights Advocates (KARA) has told me that brutal, mass slaughters of animals are yearly occurrences, and that the South Korean government has neither condemned these practices nor made any effort to align the handling of future outbreaks with OIE guidelines.
     This is why I cannot support your hosting of the XXIII Olympic Winter Games. In the next six and a half years that could all change, but until some radical changes take place in your care and treatment of animals, I will do all I can to inform my fellow Americans of these untidy details as they contemplate booking flights on Korean Air for February 2018.
Sincerely yours,
Bob Berman 

---