The first thing that struck me walking through Moran Market in southern Seoul was how they kept animals for the slaughter.

Yellow-coloured dogs were lying side-by-side without any room to move or stretch. Dogs, chickens, goats, turkeys and ducks where lined up in cages, ready for the next shopper searching for fresh meat.

The smells were varied – on the one side it smelled like Old MacDonald's farm, while on the other side it smelled like barbecued meat.

I didn't witness any active cruelty being inflicted on the animals. The shopkeepers had obviously had bad experiences with foreigners and it was made clear to me that I was not welcome.

The story is that dogs are hung from the bars of their cages and when nearly dead are taken down to have their fur blowtorched off – none of which I've seen.

While I was taking pictures, a butcher came running toward me waving a blade about the size of my forearm yelling for me to stop and leave. Luckily, I spoke enough Korean to calm him down and then offered him a smoke to smooth things over.

On the other side of the market where it smells like a tailgate party, a foreigner was eating boshin-tang (body preserving stew), or dog meat soup.

"How is the soup?" I asked.

"The texture is almost like mutton. It has a fatty taste and is very chewy.

I eat it about once a week," said the foreigner.

The brutality of dogs being slaughtered is a tale many times told, but recently, the age-old dispute over one of South Korea's traditional dishes has resurfaced after a government plan to impose strict regulations on the processing and selling of dog meat.

The measures would prohibit any brutal slaughter of dogs and also sets hygiene guidelines on the processing and sale of gae gogi (dog meat).

The new measures brought an immediate response from animal rights activists and people who oppose the practice. They say that the government's plan won't bring the trade under control but instead will officially legalize the centuries-old practice.

"Setting up these standards will only legalize this cruel practice," said the chairwoman of the Korean Animal Protection Society, Kum Sun-nam. "This will not do the animals any favour. Dog-meat butchers will feel vindicated. There is also a fear that more people will eat dog now that there are higher hygiene laws."

"This is just the government's way to control animal groups," added Kum.

The major complaint from KAPS and other animal rights groups is the brutal methods by which many dogs are killed in South Korea. Dog-meat lovers believe that by beating, strangling or boiling live dogs they will give the meat a better taste and increase its medicinal value – "a value that has not been proven by medical science," said Kum.

Proponents of the age-old dish see it differently. They argue that dog food has many medicinal values such as beefing up men's virility and improving women's skin.

"Anyone can tell you that eating dog meat is very healthy," said Park Gye-dong while enjoying a bowl of boshin-tang with his friends, "The Chinese wrote about its healing powers 3,000 years ago in their medical texts, and even now doctors tell patients who are recuperating from operations to eat dog meat in order to recover quickly. I would eat it more often but it's a little expensive."

Sitting with Park was Kim Dong-soo who added, "Sometimes we become a little obsessed with the feelings of Westerners who try to lecture us on values and regard others as barbarians. Who are they to lecture us? We have 5,000 years of history, and dog eating is part of our culture."

A tradition that Kum hopes will die out soon before a negative lesson is passed on to Korean children, who see dogs as pets and not a food source.

"If children think that eating pets is OK, who knows what kind of cruel things they will do to animals," said Kum. "It also harms the younger generation because the world sees Koreans with a tainted image. This is not a good tradition to pass on to our children."

But Dr. Yong-Geun Ann, who teaches in the food nutrition department at Chungcheong College and has written books on the subject, believes that Koreans should not feel ashamed because of the misguided views of others.

"The resumption of the controversy over the edibility of dog meat is due to the federal government's tepid attitude. The government should allow the slaughter and consumption of dog by law. Regrettably, the federal government hasn't made any decision on it up to now.

“It's due to the fact that the government is being pulled in opposing directions, with the animal rights activists on one side and the dog meat consumers on the other," said Ann who is also known as Dr. Dogmeat.

The Korean government has been under severe criticism at home and abroad for disregarding what dogs have been subjected to before they are slaughtered.

Since the current laws on animal protection and slaughtering don’t include dogs as animals fit for human consumption, the processing of dog meat has gone underground with no official guidelines to guarantee hygiene and animal welfare.

With about 6,000 restaurants in Korea and 10 per cent of the population eating any of the 350 different dog-meat dishes, the legal position doesn’t matter – the industry is thriving without any serious attempt at control.