Dog Meat

Koreans eat dog meat and because of this, many people think that Koreans are barbarians. There was a world wide controversy over this in which the French were one of the main criticizers. I would like to clarify this.

First, eating dog food is just part of its culture. It defines who they are. In fact, Koreans have been eating dog food for centuries. A 19th century version of gaejang-guk explains the preparation of the dish by boiling dog meat with scallions and chili powder If Koreans are criticized for its culture, French should be criticized for eating horses for riding and eating them, the Chinese should be criticized for eating cats, dogs and monkeys, the Japanese should be criticized for killing whales and dolphins for sushis. Some people

Second, dog food is actually healthy for you. The dog's genes are very similar to humans. On kind of dog food is a soup called gaejang-juk, a spicy stew meant to balance the body's heat during the summer months, this is claimed to ensure good health by balancing one's gi, or vital energy of the body.

Last of all, one of the major controversies of dog meat was eating pet dogs as food. This is a major myth that is held. Koreans eat dogs that are bred called nureongi. These dogs are not house hold pets. But, because of the myth, many Koreans of been discriminated in foreign countries. For example, one Korean friend of mine told me a personal experience that he had when he was young. His family was traveling in Italy when he went into a convienient store to buy ice cream when the store owner told him that he doesn't sell anything to dog eaters. He was really embarrased and had to come out.

I would hope that this essay cleared up any misunderstandings about dog food or misconceptions that people have about Korean dog food. Korean dog food is just part of its culture.

The consequences of using blogs

Today, I would like to talk about the consequences of using blogs.

Blogs are internet spaces that anyone can go into. It's like buying land for free. Blogs let you interact with one another and let you spread and find information around fast. For example, going to a district library will probably take 10 minutes. Then, finding the book that you want will take another 10 minutes. If it has something to do with research, it will take another additional 2 hours to skim the book and try to sort out the irrevalant information. This is minimum and could take much more time. However, when you use the internet and go into blogs, the information would be summarized for you and in about 30 minutes, you can get all the information you need.

There is a hazard that follows this. The hazard is that false information can be seemed real. This means that someone can put flase information on the blogs and make it seem real. It can also make a minority of people seem like that a view in a controversial issue is the majority's view by posting many blogs at the same time. This had actually happened in South Korea. In South Korea, there was a false rumor that whoever eats American beef will get mad cow disease and die. Many people believed this because people who were against the importation of American beef had put up many false evidence on blogs. Riots happened and there was disorder in the country for some time. Even during the riots, some people spread false information that a college girl had died because the police hit her too hard during one of the riots. It sparked anti-government feelings and many more people joined the riot. Even after the person who spread that rumor was found guilty, many people still believed that a real college girl had died.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_beef_imports_in_South_Korea

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=5249409