Ajumma's Journal: animal rights.

It was touching to receive a comment from a kind-hearted reader who offered to adopt one of the dogs featured on my posting - Yeonpyeong's Other Victims. It's good to know that something's being done for the 200 to 300 stray animals and abandoned pets on Yeonpyeong-do. Three cheers for these animal rights activists, vets and members of the Korean Society for Animal Freedom who provided some relief for the distressed creatures left behind on the island and who were able to bring back to the mainland some of those which needed medical attention.

It was also interesting to hear on KBS World Radio that improvements were needed for an animal management system to deal with such emergencies in the future. Who was it who said that the measure of a truly civil society is how well or badly it takes care of the weak and vulnerable? Unfortunately in my own country, we're not so advanced so this is a good reminder of how far we have to go.

Animal rights activist Park So-youn holds stray dogs rescued from a village damaged by North Korean artillery shelling, upon her leaving a ferry from Yeonpyeong Island, November 29, 2010.

REUTERS/Jo Yong-Hak

A police officer carries a wounded dog to a ferry after animal rights activists rescued it from a village damaged by North Korean artillery shelling, at a port on Yeonpyeong Island, November 29, 2010.

A South Korean animal rights activist carries dogs to a ferry at the port of South Korea's Yeonpyeong Island Monday, Nov. 29, 2010 after searching the island to look for abandoned or injured animals to evacuate them. On the ship are journalists also leaving the island to return to the South Korean mainland
(AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)