We at PETA have always known that fur is worn by beautiful animals and ugly people, and it looks like Seoul, South Korea, agrees. Fur-monger Fendi got into a hairy situation when it wanted to send a forest's worth of animals down the runway at Seoul's exclusive new Floating Island culture center.

After animal advocates lodged strong complaints with city officials, the officials told Fendi to sack the skins or pack up and leave. "We have clearly confirmed social sentiment against fur products," said city spokesperson Jong-Hyun Lee.

Fendi refused, and now the fashion house has to look for a house in which to show its fall collection of cruelty. Fendi has just a few days left to choose between losing the fur and losing one of its biggest marketing events of the year.
 

 
This is a groundbreaking move for South Korea, which has historically been a big producer and consumer of fur. Hopefully, South Korea's neighbor, China, will take note and give fur the cold shoulder too.
 

Written by Michelle Sherrow

We recently told you about South Korean officials who buried more than 1 million pigs alive in an ill-conceived effort to control foot-and-mouth disease. PETA has recently obtained video footage of the killings, which shows workers as they toss live pigs on top of one another in a mass grave. Pigs are pushed out of trucks and into trenches, covered with dirt, and left to suffocate. Air pockets form in the soil, allowing some pigs to breathe, meaning that some may languish for days, injured and surrounded by dead pigs, before they die.

PETA has contacted several offices but has so far received no response. We need your help to keep more animals from being buried alive. Please visit our action alert page in order to e-mail the South Korean embassy in the U.S. and ask officials there to pressure the South Korean government to stop these cruel live burials immediately and institute more humane ways of dealing with foot-and-mouth disease.

And to help pigs right here at home whose fates often aren't much better, order a vegetarian/vegan starter kit today.

Written by Michelle Sherrow

It sounds too horrific to be true, but officials in South Korea are piling pigs on top of each other in trucks, dumping thousands of them into mass graves, and burying them alive.

This atrocity is intended to control an outbreak of foot and mouth disease, but there is an inexpensive vaccine for the disease that the South Korean government inexplicably refuses to use. As many as 34,000 pigs have been killed in a single day. If this cruel slaughter is allowed to continue, the number of pigs killed could reach more than 1 million.

Please urge South Korean authorities to stop this massacre immediately. Send a polite e-mail to the ambassador of the Republic of Korea to the U.S., Han Duk-soo, telling him that you want the South Korean government to stop burying pigs alive and to use humane methods of controlling foot and mouth disease.

Written by Michelle Sherrow

After North Korea fired an artillery barrage into the Yellow Sea yesterday, U.S. State Department Assistant Secretary Philip J. Crowley told reporters, "Well, I'm sure it resulted in a lot of dead fish. And we certainly hope that PETA will protest."

We're flattered that Mr. Crowley has faith in PETA's ability to defend fish sea kittens, and we would like to note that since we do indeed tackle "everything from fur-wearing Hollywood celebrities and circus elephant acts to the meat and dairy industry," we need folks like Mr. Crowley who are concerned about sea kittens to take action to help them. For starters, we can all help stop the military from bombarding ocean life between California and Hawaii with sonar blasts.

Written by Karin Bennett

You may have noticed that PETA has been working hard to give our finned friends a PR boost. Well, it seems that some sea kittens in South Korea may have heard about our campaign and decided to do their own makeover. According to an article in the U.K.'s Telegraph, two female carp in a small pond in Chongju have adapted to look like humans! Check out their distinctive noses, eyes, and lips:

thegreenhead / CC

We already knew that sea kittens have complex social systems, communicate with each other using low-frequency sounds, and use tools just like humans do, but now they even look like us! Cannibalism is generally frowned upon, so do you think this might persuade people to finally stop eating sea kittens, once and for all?

P.S. If this story has inspired you to give up fish for good, try out this recipe for grilled tofu with blackened seasoning. Looks just like grilled fish, tastes a million times better, and I promise it never resembled Mr. Limpet.

Written by Liz Graffeo

Let's say that you're South Korean. Let's also say that you're vegetarian. Now, what do you do if you basically sympathize with the sentiments of the tens of thousands of South Koreans who have taken to the streets in recent months to protest the importation of American beef, but you know that concerns over mad cow don't quite capture the whole story? Well, if your name is Kyung-Dam Park, you slip into a fuzzy cow costume, stand outside the South Korean embassy in Manila, and hold a sign that reads, "It's Mad to Eat Meat. Go Vegetarian."

This is what Kyung-Dam Park had to say: "With all the disease directly linked to eating animals, you really have to be mad to eat any meat these days. Going vegetarian is the best thing you can do for your health and animals."

Park's point? While South Koreans' fears about mad cow (the disease that ravages the brain and turns it into Swiss cheese) are well founded, there are lots of other reasons for South Koreans (and everyone else) to keep all meat (from the U.S. or anywhere else) off their plates.