(Seoul = Yonhap News) Reporter Lee Eui-jin = It has been found that the animal protection group Animal Freedom Solidarity has established a policy of 'purchasing all 200 bears in Korea and secured a budget of hundreds of millions of won in order to end the bear breeding industry for bear gall harvesting, etc.'
However, it is experiencing difficulties due to purchase price issues and provision of a transport destination.
According to a report by Yonhap News on the 27th, the Animal Freedom Solidarity recently held a general meeting and decided to allocate hundreds of millions of won from donations to purchase domestically bred bears.
The purpose is to take full responsibility for the rescue process from purchasing the remaining ownership rights to farms across the country to relocation.
CEO Cho Hee-kyung said, "We purchase them directly to save animal lives," and added, "The bears did not have much life left, so our members supported our idea to move them to a better environment as soon as possible."
Domesticated bears refer to Asiatic black bears raised for the purpose of collecting male spores. Typically, they are raised in cages for their entire lives and then slaughtered.
It is also common to see cases of death or self-harm due to multiple animals being trapped together in narrow iron cages measuring 2 to 4 meters in length and width.
As a result of field investigations by civic groups such as the Animal Freedom Alliance in 2019, there were cases of self-harming behavior, such as chewing on iron bars and losing all of the fangs.
Afterwards, the government, farms, local governments, and animal groups agreed to end the industry in 2022, the Wildlife Act was revised, and breeding and harvesting of bear snails was banned starting this year. However, there are quite a few bears left on farms without being rescued.
Currently, if you want to give bears a life outside of cages, you must secure ownership by purchasing them from a farm.
However, negotiations with animal groups have been sluggish so far as farmers, who were forced to close their businesses due to the revision of the law, have maintained high sales prices as compensation.
According to the organization, as of mid-month, there were 210 bears in this situation nationwide.
Animal Freedom Solidarity agreed with two farms to purchase 99 of these animals at the end of last month, and signed a sales contract for 19 animals on the 4th of this month.
An official from the Animal Freedom Alliance said, “We have decided to sign a contract for 8 more animals next week. Then, except for one, we will be signing contracts with most of the remaining farms.”
The problem is one farm in the metropolitan area that is known to have about 70 animals.
It is said that the farm in question demanded 10 million won per bear, more than twice the amount paid when purchasing bears from other farms (4 million won per bear).
Animal Freedom Solidarity plans to secure as many of the remaining animals as possible, including the bears owned by the farm, and send them to protection facilities at home and abroad.
Not only the purchase but also the preparation of a transfer destination is a task.
The Animal Freedom Association has sent bears to sanctuaries around the world, including 22 bears to the United States in 2022, 6 to Denmark in June of this year, and 5 to the United Kingdom earlier this month.
The group's policy is to communicate closely with these organizations and other conservation facilities around the world to ensure that the bears spend the rest of their lives in as stable conditions as possible.
Animal Freedom Solidarity urged the government to proactively participate in ending bear farming as the organization directly funds the purchase and seeks a transfer destination.
The purpose is that if breeding and ownership, which are prohibited by the revision of the law, continue, the government should actively consider legal measures such as confiscation.
Representative Cho said, “I hope that you will make every effort to prevent the cruel history of treating animals that need to be preserved under the concept of breeding from being repeated.”
Bear breeding in Korea was allowed in 1981 to increase farm income. At one time, there were over 1,000 bears in captivity, and it also earned the disgrace of being the only member of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) that raises bears for harvesting bear galls.
