Last October, the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (MAFRA) conducted a survey of 3,000 people on their perceptions of how well the Korean law enforcement agencies deal with animal cruelty crimes. About 93 percent replied that they need to revise animal protection laws to punish animal abusers more severely; 71.7 percent evaluated that the level of animal protection of Korea lags behind that of developed countries. The great majority of Koreans agreed that the level of animal protection in Korea is below expectations of the public.

The Animal Protection Act (APA), the law established in 1991 and recently revised in 2011, seeks to protect lives, ensure security and promote welfare of animals and cultivates a national psyche on animal rights. Despite the existence of laws for animal protection, still animals in Korea are considered as property, not as living creatures. “Animals in Korea are no different than plastic toys in terms of legal status,” said Joe Sae-hyung, the previous manager of Green Party Korea (GPK)’s Animal Rights Campaign.

In April, the press broke the news that a man in his 50s was arrested for killing 600 cats by throwing them in hot water. He had captured the cats near households by alluring them with chicken and other foods. After boiling them for two minutes, he skinned them, gutted them, and then sold them for about 15 dollars to people who supposedly believed that eating cats would help with joint problems just because cats are so flexible. The terrible murderer who deprived 600 cats of their lives in such a brutal manner was accused of violating the APA; however, he was sentenced to only 10 months in prison, two years of probation and 80 hours of community service.

In February, an alcohol-fueled man in his forties threw a six-month-old dog out of the window. Not content with that, he burned the dead body with gasoline and dumped it at a nearby garden. The reason why he committed such cruelties was simply because it was not that easy for him to train the puppy to be housebroken and because the puppy shed too much. As the man who killed 600 plus cats, he also was charged with violating the APA, but he was sent to jail for one year or fined 10,000 dollars at most.

He is highly likely to be fined thousands of dollars only, considering previous cases of similar animal cruelty: A male who threw the dog he had stolen out of window in the fourth floor was fined only 2,000 dollars  by the reason of his emotional instability in June, 2015. The way animals are treated in Korea seems to be quite different from that in developed countries.

In the United Kingdom, the court sentenced a woman in her 20s to five months in jail for caging and not feeding her dog in January. They also prohibited her from keeping an animal for the rest of her life. Although she asked for favorable arrangements due to the fact that she was emotionally unstable at that time after losing her father and divorcing her husband, the court refused to do so, saying, “There is no excuse for animal cruelty.”

In case of the United States, the Federal Bureau of Investigation(FBI) took actions to toughen penalties for animal abusers. The FBI started to classify animal cruelty as a Group A felony, on par with homicide, arson and assault from this January. Law enforcement agencies in the U.S. now have four subgroups to choose from when reporting animal abuse to the FBI: simple/gross neglect, intentional abuse and torture, organized abuse (like dogfighting and cockfighting) and animal sexual abuse. Animal-related crimes used to be reported into a catch-all category in the FBI’s National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS), but now classified into the four categories and collected via the NIBRS.

Why do animals in Korean society have such a low standard of living albeit its status as one of the most developed countries? Many say that it is due to the “too-fast” economic growth. Within only several decades, our ancestors achieved the rapid economic growth called “Miracle of Han River,” transforming a poor developing country into a powerful developed one. The country with people who had less to eat so randomly killed animals for food, now stands shoulder to shoulder with the world powers. There lies the problem; although Korea’s economy has been boosted greatly, the conventional perception that animals could be used as a means to satisfy their needs does not seem to have been changed a bit.

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated,”  said Mahatma Gandhi, a spiritual leader of India. The way a nation treats its animals reflects how it treats its disadvantaged people, which shows how great a nation is. To be the nation that is not only great in terms of economy but in all areas, it is urgent to change the way we treat animals.