Update From the Field: Busan's Gupo Market in South Korea

"I'm so sorry... so, so sorry..." Those were the words In Defense of Animals' Ditch Dog Meat Director Kiana Kang could not stop whispering.

It was the first time she had witnessed a dog meat market in person and it was Busan Gupo, no less - one of the worst in South Korea!

We've all seen similar videos on social media, and heard similar accounts over the years. We've all heard the stories. We've all seen the pictures. But it's a very different thing in person.

You try to maintain a mask of professionalism. In the end, you just can't hold back the tears any longer. The look of fear in the dogs' eyes, or for the dogs who hadn't been there long, hope. Two dogs were being slaughtered somewhere nearby. Their desperate final cries echoed through the market as she passed the cage of yet another dog. One was so beaten up! With blood dripping from his mouth he looked at her and wagged his tail to ask, “Please help me.”

"I'm so sorry... so, so sorry..." she kept saying, as the tears and the outrage poured forth.

This should not be, my friends, it just should not! And it WILL NOT BE, with your help today.

Right now as you read this, Kiana is in-country, in the streets of South Korea, working to develop local partnerships with businesses, activists and well connected and extremely influential international organizations that will help us to revitalize Busan's awful Gupo Market – that will transform each killing stall one by one and give vendors new trades they can be proud of.

The scope of the suffering is so massive that this kind of systemic, grassroots change is the only way. And those first stalls are only the beginning. In giving, you will bring lasting change to Busan's Gupo Market that will inspire other slaughterhouses to follow suit as they see how business, post-dog-meat, will skyrocket.

History hangs on the success of our work. Please give today for the dogs and cats suffering in South Korea.