Mistreating Pets

[Anchor Lead]

A growing number of pet owners spare no expense for their four-legged friends. Even hotels and spas especially for pets have emerged on the scene recently. But on the other hand, more and more pets are abused or abandoned by their owners than ever before.

[Pkg]

A woman holding a puppy heads to a garbage bin. She then places the dog inside. The dog escapes right away and begins to follow the woman. She picks it up, puts it back in the trash bin and disappears. The footage was recorded by a black box of a car that was parked nearby at the time.

[Soundbite] Witness(Voice modified) : "A dog was stuck in a net with a can over here. It might have been hurt while squirming to get out."

A man brutally beats a cat with a plastic stick. The animal cries in pain, but it does little to stop the man. He then puts the cat in a jar and urinates into it. What's more, he even posted the footage on the Internet, but he was eventually caught by an animal protection group. With the population of pet owners in Korea surpassing ten million people, the number of abused and abandoned pets is also surging.

[Soundbite] Park So-yeon(Head of Animal Protection Group) : "What's different from the past is that these days perpetrators record animal abuse on video and show it to others. The perpetrators are also younger now."

This animal shelter even has a surrogate poodle mother. She is in charge of taking care of abandoned puppies.

[Soundbite] Chung Sun-hak(Director of Pet Shelter) : "We keep a surrogate mother because abandoned puppies are usually dehydrated when we find them and need breast milk as soon as possible."

Under the current Animal Protection Act, those who abuse animals are subject to less than one year in jail or a fine of up to 10 million won.