Curse of Kim Jong-un’s dogs haunts peninsular politics

The curse of Kim Jong-un’s dogs continues to haunt peninsular politics.

Kim’s pups were highly-ceremoniously dumped on an unwilling foster father, then South Korean president, Moon Jae-in, after talks in the north in 2018.

“Here,” said Kim, more or less. “Take my puppies and raise them as if they were your own. They’re yours now. Take them and get lost.”

And now, they’re in a zoo. Not Kim and Moon, they’re not in a zoo. They are free to go about their business as best they are able. It’s the pups that have been banged up.

In the presence of Kang Gijung, Mayor of Gwangju – “a creative city where all citizens are happy” – Gomi and Songgang, were welcomed to a state-of-the-art zoo installation in the southern city. It’s a very strange outcome for a dog. Dogs tend to end up in forever homes, rescued or dog pounds. Other, less desirable, doggy outcomes are of course available locally.

Ex-pres Moon abandoned the two white Pungsan hunting dogs – a breed indigenous to North Korea – last month, citing a lack of financial support for his pets.

Nowhere in the story do the poor dogs appear to have done anything wrong at all, so how have they ended up in a tug-of-hate maintenance dispute? It’s like they were trafficked from the north, but fell in with the right crowd, in a way, which turned out to be the wrong crowd, and now they’ve ended up in prison. In the care of the local authority. A shelter for refugees.

Mayor Kang said…

“Gomi and Songgang are a symbol of peace and South-North Korean reconciliation and cooperation. We will raise them well like we cultivate a seed for peace.”

Speaking of seed, Gomi and Songgang have been going hard at it since they arrived in the free south and now have a frolicsome six pups of their own. Kim’s grandpups, were all born after they came south. One of them, a youth offender named Byeol, has been in the Gwangju institution since 2019. The remaining five are in other zoos and public facilities in South Korea.

Kim is no fool. It almost goes without saying that Kim’s genetically-programmed invaders must be kept entirely separate from one another. Foolhardy Gwangju zoo officials said they would raise Byeol and her parents as a family. But the family has been separated for so long during processing that they no longer recognise one another.

Gomi and Songgang are officially state property and Moon, Kim’s surrogate, took care of them at the presidential residence, while he lived there. When he moved out in May, Gomi and Songgang went with him. While Moon was busy walking Kim’s dogs, Kim was building nuclear reactors.

But in early November, Moon demanded the government pay the cost of his beloved companion animals’ food and care – an amount millionaire Scrooge McMoon calculated at US$1,800 (60,000 baht) a month. When the government claimed that it had not defaulted on a single payment, Moon had no hesitation in kicking the dogs out.