Korea's pet abandonment issue worsens during the Chuseok holiday weekend

This past Chuseok holiday weekend, the number of pets abandoned has increased. According to YTN News, this is a troubling trend in Korea. Although the country has been having pet abandonment issues for some time now, numbers increase particularly during the holidays.

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In 2013, approximately 97,000 domestic animals were abandoned, two-thirds of which were dogs. It's suspected that pet abandonment occur in such high numbers because many owners live in residencies that don't allow the ownership of pets. 

Last year, Korean authorities attempted to reduce these numbers by enacting a new pet registration system, under which owners are required to register their pets that are over 3 months old. Despite this new system, some animal experts have noted that there hasn't been significant changes.

Park So Yeon, an animal protection group representative, states, "It's easy to take off and throw away the [registration] tag and there are still many citizens who don't register their animals at all. [As a result,] during the 5-day holiday, owners can still easily abandon their pets."

The YTN News clip above features a dog named Mong, who was left at a dog cafe in Gyeonggi-do. Even though his owners were contacted for days, they never appeared to pick him up. Many pets like Mong are abandoned in this fashion, as they are left in places such as dog cafes, animal clinics, and pet grooming salons.

Sung Kyung Mi, director of Seoul Daheung-dong Animal Clinic, shares, "Although we write down owners' addresses, phone numbers, and other information, due to 'hotelling' [when people put down their temporary hotel information] there were many cases when we tried to contact the owners and found that their phone number and address information was incorrect."

Because pet abandonment is such a common occurrence, adoption shelters are becoming overcrowded. A representative from the Donghae Animal Shelter expresses his/her concern, saying, "It's possible to get one pet adopted, but if three new pets are brought in [per day] then the numbers become inflated. A fair number of animals in the shelter would be 80, but currently we have 250."