There Is No Justification for Slaughter*
- Recognize World Wildlife Day, March 3rd Is Not “Samgeopsal Day”
March 3rd is World Wildlife Day, a date designated by the United Nations to honor and protect wild animals. Yet, in South Korea, this day has been repurposed into "Samgyeopsal Day," a marketing scheme that aggressively promotes the consumption of pork, normalizing and even celebrating the exploitation of animals. This so-called "day marketing" began in 2002 when the Paju-Yeoncheon Livestock Cooperative launched it to boost pork sales after a foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) outbreak. Since then, it has been uncritically embraced nationwide, conveniently erasing the fact that more than 150,000 pigs were massacred during that crisis.
And that was just the beginning. The FMD outbreaks of 2010–2011 resulted in the mass culling of over 3.53 million cows and pigs. In the ten years that followed, from 2011 to 2019, a staggering 70 million animals were culled at the cost of 4 trillion KRW. In 2020 alone, during the avian influenza outbreak, 30 million lives were taken in mass cullings. Anyone who has even the slightest understanding of how these cullings are carried out cannot help but be horrified by their sheer brutality and inhumanity. Beyond the immediate cruelty, mass burials also result in serious environmental consequences, as the pressure to cut costs and the rush to find disposal sites frequently lead to soil and water contamination from leachate leaks. Yet, despite the grave ethical and ecological concerns, the government has long maintained a consistent pattern of irresponsibility, failing to address these ongoing crises with any meaningful reform.
In response to public criticism, the government has nominally reduced the scope of preventative culling, yet the overall scale of slaughter has not actually decreased. From 2019 to January 2025, 570,000 pigs have already been culled due to African swine fever (ASF). Every winter, millions, sometimes tens of millions, of chickens, ducks, and other birds are systematically killed in the name of controlling avian influenza. In 2023, the first recorded outbreak of lumpy skin disease (LSD) in South Korea led to the slaughter of 6,455 cows. Yet, despite this ongoing slaughter, society continues to turn a blind eye. The animals that escape mass culling are still treated as nothing more than commodities, their flesh labeled as safe and sanitary products for human consumption.
Animal pandemics are sending us a clear message: the artificial boundary between "wild" and "domesticated" animals is a human construct. ASF is commonly blamed on wild boars, yet the virus now spreads most aggressively within high-density factory farms. The entanglement of human activity, wildlife destruction, and factory farming is undeniable. There is no such thing as a pristine, untouched "wild." And there is no such thing as a "humane" method of confinement and slaughter. No amount of institutional regulation or technological intervention can truly protect the animals we imprison and exploit. The stark reality of today is that living beings, whose existence holds intrinsic value, are reduced to mere commodities - managed, consumed, and disposed of solely for the profit of the industrial livestock industry.
We must not forget that both wild animals and those confined in factory farms suffer as a direct result of human activity and consumption. They live under constant threat, only to be ultimately sacrificed, whether by human-induced pandemics, mass cullings, or systematic slaughter before their bodies are dismembered and sold as mere products. If humanity is to have a truly sustainable future, we must break free from the anthropocentric worldview and capitalist economic structures that depend on the relentless exploitation of nature and non-human animals.
Green Party Korea strongly opposes the marketing of March 3rd as "Samgyeopsal Day." March 3rd must be remembered as World Wildlife Day, a day to remember the countless lives that should have roamed free in the wild but were instead confined, forced into suffering, and ultimately buried alive due to disease and human negligence.
Within the ever-expanding system of capitalist factory farming, where profit takes precedence over life, countless animals have been sacrificed through disease, mass culling, and slaughter for human consumption. Their suffering and loss must not be forgotten. Remembrance is due to all the lives lost to this system.
#LifeOverSamgyeopsal #RemembranceOverSamgyeopsal #Remembrance #AbolishMassCulling #RememberTheSlaughtered #NoMoreAnimalSacrifices #EndSpeciesism #AnimalLiberation #Remembrance #Mourning #MassCulling #FootAndMouthDisease #ASF #AvianInfluenza #FactoryFarming #StateViolence #DayOfRemembranceForCulledAnimals
#GreenParty #GreenPartyKorea #GreenPartyKoreaAnimalRightsCommittee
@greenpartykr
@animalrights_greenparty
*Original Korean Text:
https://www.kgreens.org/statement/?q=YToxOntzOjEyOiJrZXl3b3JkX3R5cGUiO3M6MzoiYWxsIjt9&bmode=view&idx=155714572&t=board
There Is No Justification for Slaughter*
- Recognize World Wildlife Day, March 3rd Is Not “Samgeopsal Day”
March 3rd is World Wildlife Day, a date designated by the United Nations to honor and protect wild animals. Yet, in South Korea, this day has been repurposed into "Samgyeopsal Day," a marketing scheme that aggressively promotes the consumption of pork, normalizing and even celebrating the exploitation of animals. This so-called "day marketing" began in 2002 when the Paju-Yeoncheon Livestock Cooperative launched it to boost pork sales after a foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) outbreak. Since then, it has been uncritically embraced nationwide, conveniently erasing the fact that more than 150,000 pigs were massacred during that crisis.
And that was just the beginning. The FMD outbreaks of 2010–2011 resulted in the mass culling of over 3.53 million cows and pigs. In the ten years that followed, from 2011 to 2019, a staggering 70 million animals were culled at the cost of 4 trillion KRW. In 2020 alone, during the avian influenza outbreak, 30 million lives were taken in mass cullings. Anyone who has even the slightest understanding of how these cullings are carried out cannot help but be horrified by their sheer brutality and inhumanity. Beyond the immediate cruelty, mass burials also result in serious environmental consequences, as the pressure to cut costs and the rush to find disposal sites frequently lead to soil and water contamination from leachate leaks. Yet, despite the grave ethical and ecological concerns, the government has long maintained a consistent pattern of irresponsibility, failing to address these ongoing crises with any meaningful reform.
In response to public criticism, the government has nominally reduced the scope of preventative culling, yet the overall scale of slaughter has not actually decreased. From 2019 to January 2025, 570,000 pigs have already been culled due to African swine fever (ASF). Every winter, millions, sometimes tens of millions, of chickens, ducks, and other birds are systematically killed in the name of controlling avian influenza. In 2023, the first recorded outbreak of lumpy skin disease (LSD) in South Korea led to the slaughter of 6,455 cows. Yet, despite this ongoing slaughter, society continues to turn a blind eye. The animals that escape mass culling are still treated as nothing more than commodities, their flesh labeled as safe and sanitary products for human consumption.
Animal pandemics are sending us a clear message: the artificial boundary between "wild" and "domesticated" animals is a human construct. ASF is commonly blamed on wild boars, yet the virus now spreads most aggressively within high-density factory farms. The entanglement of human activity, wildlife destruction, and factory farming is undeniable. There is no such thing as a pristine, untouched "wild." And there is no such thing as a "humane" method of confinement and slaughter. No amount of institutional regulation or technological intervention can truly protect the animals we imprison and exploit. The stark reality of today is that living beings, whose existence holds intrinsic value, are reduced to mere commodities - managed, consumed, and disposed of solely for the profit of the industrial livestock industry.
We must not forget that both wild animals and those confined in factory farms suffer as a direct result of human activity and consumption. They live under constant threat, only to be ultimately sacrificed, whether by human-induced pandemics, mass cullings, or systematic slaughter before their bodies are dismembered and sold as mere products. If humanity is to have a truly sustainable future, we must break free from the anthropocentric worldview and capitalist economic structures that depend on the relentless exploitation of nature and non-human animals.
Green Party Korea strongly opposes the marketing of March 3rd as "Samgyeopsal Day." March 3rd must be remembered as World Wildlife Day, a day to remember the countless lives that should have roamed free in the wild but were instead confined, forced into suffering, and ultimately buried alive due to disease and human negligence.
Within the ever-expanding system of capitalist factory farming, where profit takes precedence over life, countless animals have been sacrificed through disease, mass culling, and slaughter for human consumption. Their suffering and loss must not be forgotten. Remembrance is due to all the lives lost to this system.
#LifeOverSamgyeopsal #RemembranceOverSamgyeopsal #Remembrance #AbolishMassCulling #RememberTheSlaughtered #NoMoreAnimalSacrifices #EndSpeciesism #AnimalLiberation #Remembrance #Mourning #MassCulling #FootAndMouthDisease #ASF #AvianInfluenza #FactoryFarming #StateViolence #DayOfRemembranceForCulledAnimals
#GreenParty #GreenPartyKorea #GreenPartyKoreaAnimalRightsCommittee
@greenpartykr
@animalrights_greenparty
*Original Korean Text:
https://www.kgreens.org/statement/?q=YToxOntzOjEyOiJrZXl3b3JkX3R5cGUiO3M6MzoiYWxsIjt9&bmode=view&idx=155714572&t=board