Dog meat consumption, a centuries-old practice on the Korean Peninsula, isn’t explicitly prohibited or legalized in South Korea
In order to better live with the fundamental contradiction of loving animals but also eating them, people put some animals in the “pet” box and some in the “meat source” one with a one way street between the two, in that animals that would be considered meat sources can become pets but never the other way around.
I bet it subconsciously makes some people feel more compassionate towards animals. But it’s nothing more than a moral contradiction trying to be masked.
It makes sense to feel some sense of apprehension or even disgust when the topic of eating dogs is brought up because it feels so geographically and culturally distant from us, but the truth is you can see this happen across the relatively small European continent. Dog meat used to be a thing in Switzerland, maybe not anymore. Nordics will be horrified to learn cute bunnies are a very culturally relevant meat source down south in the Mediterranean (traditional paella contains both rabbit and chicken meat), where they are also kept as pets. France loves their horse meat but in other places of Europe this is unheard of. And so on.
Don’t get me wrong, I eat meat and have a couple of cats as housemates. You couldn’t pay me enough money to try cat meat. But I don’t pretend like it isn’t a fundamental contradiction, nor will you see me retching if I hear eating cats is a thing in some region/culture.
