Seoul Man: A Memoir of Cars, Culture, Crisis, and Unexpected Hilarity Inside a Korean Corporate Titan by Frank Ahrens
Authors: Frank Ahrens
Tags: General, Biography & Autobiography, Business & Economics, Business, International, Industries, Automobile Industry
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Originally bred to be a hunting dog, it is highly athletic and intelligent.
Online, we found a no-kill shelter in a city called Asan, south of Seoul. It was run by Koreans and ex-pat volunteers. On the website was a striking white Jindo called Lily.
Rebekah and I made the ninety-minute drive to Asan in three hours, thanks to typical Korean traffic. The shelter was a ramshackle but well-intentioned collection of cages and fenced-off areas with more than a hundred dogs yapping excitedly.
We found Lily, leashed her, and took her out for a test drive. She interacted nicely with us and seemed so happy to have a walk, pulling—we thought—enthusiastically at her leash. She was bright-eyed and springy, with a pink tongue wagging happily as she trotted about. She had a little scratch on a hindquarter, but it seemed minor. Her backstory was more troubling.
Lily, who was probably less than two years old, had beenfound wandering in the countryside and brought to the shelter. We had been told she had escaped from a dog farm, where she was being bred to be sold to a dog restaurant, which are a lot less common in Korea than they used to be but can still be found off the main strips in Seoul. The type of dog typically raised for meat in Korea is a midsize yellowish Spitz-like dog called a nureongi . The dog has no formal name: neurongi means only “yellow one.” But other dogs, including the Jindo, are bred for meat, too. Some believe that Jindo meat has a superior taste. Eating dog meat has been a sore point in the country since the outside world got its first good look into Korea during the 1988 Olympics, the same year Korea became a democracy. Aware that the practice would draw international criticism, the Korean government banned dog restaurants, although the move was widely flouted. Dog meat is typically served in stew and is most popular during the summer, when it is thought to give an extra boost in the wilt of August. It is a practice that survives largely because of a subset of older Koreans who guard it as a cultural practice and resent being told what to do by outsiders. But young Koreans have little interest in dog stew and are forming more family-member relationships to their pet dogs as in the West.
After spending about an hour with Lily at the shelter, we told them we’d take her and paid the $50 adoption fee. “What a great deal,” we told ourselves.
On the way back to the base, Lily, in a strange environment, slept curled up in the dark in Rebekah’s lap in the backseat of the black Hyundai Grandeur company car I drove. She peed once. Lily, not Rebekah.
When we got home, Lily bolted around the house, sniffing out her new surroundings, adapting pretty quickly. We tucked her into a dog bed in the kitchen, closed the doors, and made a note to check the scratch on her hindquarter when we woke up.
By the next morning, the scratch, thanks to Lily’s overnight worrying, had gotten bigger: a bright red wound that looked infected. We took her to the vet on base.
While we were waiting for the vet to arrive, another person showed up with a German shepherd. We had never seen Lily interact with another dog, so we cautiously let her approach the shepherd while both dogs were leashed. I left some slack in Lily’s leash.
Lily sensed the slack and struck. She was a white fur lightning bolt that shot straight at the neck of the shepherd, which was a good thirty pounds heavier. The spookiest thing was Lily didn’t growl, didn’t bark. She just silently attacked.
We were all startled, and a vet tech on the scene reacted quickest, grabbing two handfuls of the back of Lily’s neck, pulling her off the shepherd, and subduing her. The other dog was unhurt, and Rebekah and I chalked it up to Lily’s unfamiliarity with a new situation and discomfort caused by her wound.
Lily was not violent with us, but she was a chewer. My wife’s first Kindle, a pair of prescription sunglasses, and several pairs of shoes, in addition to
Online, we found a no-kill shelter in a city called Asan, south of Seoul. It was run by Koreans and ex-pat volunteers. On the website was a striking white Jindo called Lily.
Rebekah and I made the ninety-minute drive to Asan in three hours, thanks to typical Korean traffic. The shelter was a ramshackle but well-intentioned collection of cages and fenced-off areas with more than a hundred dogs yapping excitedly.
We found Lily, leashed her, and took her out for a test drive. She interacted nicely with us and seemed so happy to have a walk, pulling—we thought—enthusiastically at her leash. She was bright-eyed and springy, with a pink tongue wagging happily as she trotted about. She had a little scratch on a hindquarter, but it seemed minor. Her backstory was more troubling.
Lily, who was probably less than two years old, had beenfound wandering in the countryside and brought to the shelter. We had been told she had escaped from a dog farm, where she was being bred to be sold to a dog restaurant, which are a lot less common in Korea than they used to be but can still be found off the main strips in Seoul. The type of dog typically raised for meat in Korea is a midsize yellowish Spitz-like dog called a nureongi . The dog has no formal name: neurongi means only “yellow one.” But other dogs, including the Jindo, are bred for meat, too. Some believe that Jindo meat has a superior taste. Eating dog meat has been a sore point in the country since the outside world got its first good look into Korea during the 1988 Olympics, the same year Korea became a democracy. Aware that the practice would draw international criticism, the Korean government banned dog restaurants, although the move was widely flouted. Dog meat is typically served in stew and is most popular during the summer, when it is thought to give an extra boost in the wilt of August. It is a practice that survives largely because of a subset of older Koreans who guard it as a cultural practice and resent being told what to do by outsiders. But young Koreans have little interest in dog stew and are forming more family-member relationships to their pet dogs as in the West.
After spending about an hour with Lily at the shelter, we told them we’d take her and paid the $50 adoption fee. “What a great deal,” we told ourselves.
On the way back to the base, Lily, in a strange environment, slept curled up in the dark in Rebekah’s lap in the backseat of the black Hyundai Grandeur company car I drove. She peed once. Lily, not Rebekah.
When we got home, Lily bolted around the house, sniffing out her new surroundings, adapting pretty quickly. We tucked her into a dog bed in the kitchen, closed the doors, and made a note to check the scratch on her hindquarter when we woke up.
By the next morning, the scratch, thanks to Lily’s overnight worrying, had gotten bigger: a bright red wound that looked infected. We took her to the vet on base.
While we were waiting for the vet to arrive, another person showed up with a German shepherd. We had never seen Lily interact with another dog, so we cautiously let her approach the shepherd while both dogs were leashed. I left some slack in Lily’s leash.
Lily sensed the slack and struck. She was a white fur lightning bolt that shot straight at the neck of the shepherd, which was a good thirty pounds heavier. The spookiest thing was Lily didn’t growl, didn’t bark. She just silently attacked.
We were all startled, and a vet tech on the scene reacted quickest, grabbing two handfuls of the back of Lily’s neck, pulling her off the shepherd, and subduing her. The other dog was unhurt, and Rebekah and I chalked it up to Lily’s unfamiliarity with a new situation and discomfort caused by her wound.
Lily was not violent with us, but she was a chewer. My wife’s first Kindle, a pair of prescription sunglasses, and several pairs of shoes, in addition to
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