Opinion | Dead Bears Tell No Tales: South Korea's Bile Farming Must End
The bear bile industry is a dark legacy of the pre-democratic era in South Korea — a stain upon its reputation and an ecological nightmare — which must come to an end.
The PyeongChang 2018 Olympic Winter Games and Winter Paralympics in South Korea showcased two animal figures — a white tiger and a moon bear — as the country’s mascots. The two animals are symbolically embedded in the nation’s culture and history, notably appearing in a famous Korean tale in which a bear became a woman who gave birth to a baby which founded the very first dynasty on the Korean Peninsula. However, from the 20th century onwards, moon bears have lived miserably in South Korea; first massacred by the Japanese Empire during the colonial period, they are now trafficked for their bile. Only five bears were known to exist in the country at the turn of the century. It was not until 2004 that the South Korean government began to undertake a restoration project in order to sustain and increase the number of endangered moon bears in the country.
The advertising may look good, but it takes truly Olympic moral gymnastics to hide the dark truth of the moon bear behind this façade. Hidden from the international community, most moon bears in South Korea are destined for slaughter to gather their gallbladder bile after ten miserable years of life in a 2x2m cage. Paradoxically, the government raised 50 moon bears for the support of the species in protected natural areas. Until recently, there were 10 times more captive bears than the number of protected wild moon bears in the country. In the mass media, whilst the former are cherished as cute, adorable, and heroic symbols that survived the Japanese colonial rule and ruthless wildlife trafficking, the latter are portrayed as troublesome and problematic, when not completely ignored.
An immoral and unresolved legacy of the past military dictatorship, the bear bile industry in South Korea should have ended with the establishment of the post-dictatorship democratic government and transitional justice brought to the captive bears — animal victims of the former autocratic state.
The Unbearable Origins of the South Korean Bear Bile Industry
The history of captive bears in South Korea begins in 1981, coinciding with the beginning of the second military dictatorship. After the military coup that followed the sudden assassination of the military dictator Chung-hee Park in 1980, then ruler Doo-hwan Chun came to power and introduced policies to alleviate economic poverty in rural communities that were deprived of basic infrastructure and services in the rapid state-led, post-war urbanization period. One such policy aimed to encourage rural farmers to import black bears from Japan, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Burma (Myanmar). A total of 496 bears from across Asia were brought to the country and confined in 2x2m battery cages. After receiving heavy criticism from global and domestic civil society groups, Chun’s administration restricted the purpose of captive bears to bile extraction, but maintained its policy on the exploitation of bears in captivity for financial gain.
Initially, bear bile products were to be exported to other countries, especially China, where demand for bear bile’s medicinal uses was high. In 1993, however, the international trade of bear-related products was totally banned in South Korea when the new democratic government — following three decades of military dictatorship — signed the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). CITES protects moon bears as endangered species and prohibits the trade of endangered animals and plants that threaten their survival.
As domestic demands for bear bile far outstripped supply, the turnover from bear farming fell, leaving many captive bears simply deserted by farmers. As the small cages which imprisoned moon bears in abandoned farms suffered rust, South Korea witnessed the sudden emergence and growing presence of the predatory animals in towns and villages across the country. The destiny of those that escaped was either execution or a return to their captivity. Every year, media outlets report the sudden, horrifying appearance of white-chested bears in towns and villages, who have escaped from rusted cages. When those captive bears reach 10 years old, farmers can legally slaughter them for their pelts and bile.
A Thorn in the Paw of the Moon Bear
The bear bile industry not only endangers moon bears but is extremely harmful to those in captivity. Captive bears often experience serious distress, mental trauma, and disorders, including repetitive behaviors and self-harm, malnourishment, weak immune systems (in unhygienic cages), and constant pain caused by a tube which is inserted inside the bear’s body to extract their bile. Owing to civil campaigns against the bear bile industry, particularly those led by Green Korea United in collaboration with other international and domestic NGOs, the government and the legislature sporadically discuss the introduction of special acts on the protection of captive bears. However, these processes consistently stall due to a lack of governmental awareness for animal rights and welfare, and opposition from the Ministry of Environment due to the costs it would incur.
Photograph of Elizabeth, a bile bear kept in captivity so that her bile can be extracted. The image was taken by the Asian Animal Protection Network in Huizhou Farm, Vietnam. She has since been removed from the farm.
At a parliamentary question session in 2013, Sung-kyu Yoon, then-Minister of the Environment, denied the ‘conservation values’ of captive bears whose bloodline is different from the Korean indigenous bears — a view in direct conflict with the international community’s efforts to protect all species of Asian black bears. Participants in the International Union for Conservation of Nature World Conservation Congress 2012, held in South Korea, reaffirmed the vulnerable status of the Asiatic black bear and urged South Korea, as well as Vietnam, to put an end to the bear bile industry. While Seoul reneged on its political responsibility to protect its wildlife animals, the number of captive bears reached more than 1,000 in 2012 and has fallen steadily to approximately 400 today, as they are legally slaughtered at the age of 10 if they do not die from neglect in their small cages.
Meanwhile, environmentalists and animal rights activists have since sought alternative ways to rescue captive bears suffering from exploitation. Farmers are paid to relinquish their ownership of the bears in captivity and campaigners provide the freed animals with new shelters in bear sanctuaries inside and outside South Korea. In 2018, the government estimated that of the 400 captive moon bears in South Korea, the number of bears over the age of ten totals at 400.
Unwilling to address the root issue at hand, the government began a sterilization campaign to restrict the growth of the bear population in 2005. Aside from putting a lid on the problem, very little has been done to raise the issue anew, or seek amends to restore the bear population. It would seem that, whether intentional or not, when captive bears over the age of ten vanish, so too does Seoul’s responsibility for them. Dead bears tell no tales, and there are few if any witnesses to their deaths in isolation. If the situation is allowed to continue, captive moon bears will be remembered only as another animal that died in great pain at the hands of human cruelty, neglect, and indifference.
A Dawn of Justice for the Moon Bear?
Bear bile farming is not only inhumane, but a stain on South Korea’s modern democratic society — a dark legacy of the military dictatorship that oppressed the nation-wide democratization movements and violated the rights of citizens. In the name of post-war recovery and economic development following the Korean War in the 1950s, the autocratic regime introduced a variety of repressible policies, including the production and export of bear bile products.
All were in vain. The government failed to accomplish its goals due to the fierce rebuke of criticism and resistance it received from the international community. When the dictatorial regime was finally replaced by the democratic government, the immoral legacies of the past should all have been properly redressed. It would have been a relatively simple task for Seoul to acknowledge the illegality of the former government's bear bile farming policy and remedied the dreadful pains from which the captive bears suffered — and continue to suffer today.
Seoul’s complacence exposes a larger issue than that of the bear bile industry — the government's intransigence and ignorance of animal rights and welfare. The judgment of the former Minister for Environment that bile bears do not have any ‘conservation value’ is not only deeply anthropocentric, but completely misses the point. As an inhumane, impractical, and shameful vestige of the dictatorship, the bear bile industry must be abolished. For South Korea — which is keen to foster its global reputation as a just modern democracy that successfully overcame a brutal autocracy — moon bears captured in small rusting cages for their bile raise the question of how responsive the democratic governments have been to non-human victims of the dark past.
Since the democratic transition in 1992, South Korean citizens have regained the right to seek proper justice for the dictatorship’s human rights violations and other crimes committed. But what of non-human victims? In terms of animal rights and welfare, the captive bears are victims of both the oppressive regime and anthropocentricism. The incumbent president Jae-in Moon has populated his cabinet with former democratization movement activists and concurrently made indications to enhance animal welfare law. Yet his administration, with all the resources at its command, has little to show for it.
While civil society initiatives have rescued small numbers of bears, they have made greater progress than the government, rescuing bears from battery cages and sending them to animal sanctuaries abroad to countries like the U.S. for their protection. Influencers like Dr. Jane Goodall, a renowned primatologist and environmental activist, urged the government to put an end to the bear bile industry that is “really dreadful” and “no civilized people should be engaged in”. Right now, however, the state is next to absent in its role in resolving the problems borne out of the bear bile industry. In 2019, a yearly budget to establish bear sanctuaries, opposed by the Ministry of Environment, did not pass in the Korean National Assembly. One hopeful move that the government took, though still farm from serving justice to moon bears in captivity, was its decision in September 2020 to protect 36 young captive bears who were born inside the cages, which actually demonstrate that the previous governmental sterilization campaign failed.
The international community and the South Korean government have already affirmed the illegality of bear bile farming, and farmers are willing to relinquish their ownership of the captive bears as long as proper compensation is provided by the state. They make no economic gains for the farmers as well as there are alternative substances that can provide similar medicinal effects of bear bile. For almost 40 years, generations of moon bears have perished in 2x2m battery cages, experience mental and physical pain due to captivity, and the tube implanted in their bodies for bile extraction, even while they are still alive. It is now time to end this cruelty and the legacy of the dark past. As long as there are still victims of the dictatorship living in the same inhumane conditions they did before the transition period, the democratization of South Korea will remain incomplete. The post-dictatorship state has been attentive to remediating the human rights violations and abuses of the military dictatorship in South Korea. It must now respond to the voices of the global and domestic civil society and urgently address the dire situation in which they have left moon bears — once a respected symbol of Korea.
Dead bears may tell no tales, but their deaths speak volumes about the people responsible for them. It is far past time that South Korea closed this chapter of its history.
Edited by: Daniel Odin Shaw, Cameron Vaské
All views expressed in this article are solely those of the author, and do not represent the views of The International Scholar or any other organization.
Photo Credits:
[Banner Photo]
Rescued Moon Bear by Neil Dalphin, Flickr,
https://tinyurl.com/y5pm6rt6[In-text image]
By The original uploader was SlimVirgin at English Wikipedia. - Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons., CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37328589
