14 months imprisonment for the killer of 76 cats in South Korea

A twenty-year-old man from South Korea was sentenced to 14 months in prison for killing 76 cats in one of the most violent cases of animal cruelty in years in the country.

The Changwon District Court in southeastern South Korea said on Tuesday that “a man in his twenties was convicted last week of violating the country’s animal protection law.”

The court explained that “the man killed the cats between December and September 2023 as a result of a deep hatred for the animal after other cats began scratching his car.”

She added: "He caught stray cats and adopted other cats from websites before strangling them to death and killing another of them with scissors. He also killed a cat by running it over with a car."

The court ruled to increase the sentence because he had repeatedly committed “crimes whose brutality cannot be described” intentionally.

She also confirmed that the ruling took into account that “the man has no criminal record, and that he expressed remorse for his crimes,” adding that “the man’s state of mind, which she did not specify, was a motive for committing the crimes.”

The convict appealed the ruling, while Borami Seo, director of the South Korean office of the International Humanitarian Community, confirmed that "the ruling reflects Korean society's increasing interest in animals and intolerance of such terrible brutality."