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회사 동료가 몇일전에 난 기사읽어봤냐고 아주 조소하는듯한 표정으로 말하더군요.
전 무슨기사길래 그런가 하고 읽어봤더니…참 왜 이런 기사만 미국에서는 배포하여 미국인들에게 나쁜 선입견만 주는지…
또 금계난씨라고 하는분은 왜 미국기자에게 “It is fortunate she left Korea,” 라는 말을 하여
한국성을 가진 모든 한국인들에게 유쾌한 기분을 가로막는지 궁금하군요..Lisa Fernandez 라고 하는 기자의 주관적인 기사인것 같기도 하고요..
한번 읽어보세요. 미국인들이 주로 읽는 기사를 우리들도 읽어봐야지
애네들이 어떤 생각을 한국에 대해 갖고 있는지 알수 있으니까요..=================================================================
Pet rescue from afar
OAKLAND WOMAN’S CAMPAIGN TO SAVE DOGS, CATS FROM BEING EATEN PAYING OFF IN KOREA
By Lisa Fernandez
Mercury News
Kyenan Kum has spent the past 15 years working to keep dogs in her native Korea from being tortured and turned into soup. The campaign has cost the 57-year-old painter her career as an artist. For companionship, she often turns to a flock of mourning doves outside her Oakland apartment building and Dooboo, a mangy feral cat once held hostage with a noose around its neck by a Korean shop owner.
Finally, her campaign is paying off.
This fall, she received word from South Korean Ministry of Agriculture officials confirming they intend to strengthen a 1991 law banning animal cruelty. The new amendment mandates stiffer penalties and offers specifics on what constitutes animal abuse. If passed, it will take effect in 2006.
“This is big,” said Kum, a slight woman with an assertive personality. “Really big.”
Kum’s efforts could help save an estimated 2 million dogs and cats each year who are maimed, beaten, whipped, electrocuted, torched, caged and cramped — all the result of mythical beliefs that torturing animals produces enzymes that provide health benefits.
For Kum, saving animals is interwoven with the larger story of how she set out to save herself.
“Kyenan has been challenging the oppression and unfair treatment of the weak and less privileged,” said Yoon Kerr in an e-mail from England, where she is the British representative of an animal rights group Kum founded. “A fight against the dog-and-cat meat trade has something very much in common with a fight for equality in a hierarchical society.”
Kum was born in 1947, in Daegu, Korea, the youngest of seven brothers and sisters. Her father was an herbalist, a forward-thinking man who taught his family to care for stray rabbits, birds, cats and dogs. He also taught his daughters that they were equal to men, back then a controversial idea in Korea’s patriarchal society. Kum saw relatives beaten by their husbands. She saw uneducated women. She wanted no part of that.
“Women were second-class citizens,,” she said, recalling a time 30 years ago. “I didn’t know why I had to wash my brother’s socks. I had my own socks to wash. I didn’t want to be mistreated. I had to get out of that country.”
She escaped the first chance she got, marrying an American in 1970 and moving to Wisconsin. They soon divorced, and in 1978, Kum found her way to the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, where she has lived ever since.
Kum owns an eight-unit apartment building that her sister, Sunnan Kum, gave her the $30,000 down payment to purchase 20 years ago. As repayment to her sister, who is a devoted animal rights activist in Korea, and also to honor the values instilled by her father, Kum started International Aid for Korean Animals, which now has about 6,000 members. She has gone back and forth between the two countries often, helping her sister establish Korea’s first sanctuary for abused and abandoned cats and dogs.
“It is fortunate she left Korea,” Sunnan Kum wrote in an e-mail translated from Korean by a friend. “Helping animals is regarded as abnormal in Korea. But in America, she is praised for helping animals. It is better for her to live in America in many ways.”
Kum agrees.
“The law in Korea has changed to make women equal,” she said. “But what’s not changed is women in my generation themselves. They’re doctors and lawyers like men. But at home, they’re still left to do all the housework, exactly as it was when I left Korea.”
Kum said there are changes in attitudes about animals in Korea, too.
Cats, for example, have it better, Kum said. They’re no longer considered “evil” rodent-like beings, and many Koreans keep them as pets. But there is still an underground industry of animal vendors who boil cats to make anti-arthritis potions, she said. And the estimated 5,000 dog soup restaurants in Korea are proof to Kum that the government doesn’t take animal abuse seriously.
The Korean government, at least on paper, cracked down on animal abuse following the 1988 Seoul Olympics, when the dog consumption debate appeared on the world stage. Korean officials worried much of the outside world considered their country backward for eating animals the Western Hemisphere considers pets, and in 1991, the Korea Animal Protection Law was born.
This summer, Kum was asked to help write an amendment to the 1991 law, legislation she helped write but criticizes for having no teeth. This new amendment, she said, would punish animal abusers with a maximum six-month prison term and a fine of up to 2 million won, or $1,700, compared with the current $200 fine.
Both sisters believe life for animals and women is improving in Korea — although too slowly for their tastes.
IF YOU’RE INTERESTED
To learn more about the International Aid for Korean Animals in Oakland, or the Korea Animal Protection Society in Korea, click on http://www.koreananimals.org <http://www.koreananimals.org> .Contact Lisa Fernandez at lfernandez@sjmercury.com