Eileen P. Cahill

The House of Sharing and its brave grandmothers

August 14, 2019 by Eileen

There’s a picture on my computer from 2009 that’s stayed with me: elderly women dancing in a circle, surrounded by drummers and dancers in traditional Korean garments. They were celebrating the first full moon of the Lunar New Year in an outdoor space at the House of Sharing in Gwangju, Gyeonggi Province, south of Seoul. It’s the site of a museum dedicated to the survivors of Japanese military sexual slavery, and a residence for survivors. Our English tour group is […]

Categories: human rights • Tags: comfort women, japanese military sexual slavery, korean council

Leave a comment

A big beagly day: the super-thrilling, totally un-tragic story of the Beagle Rescue Network

August 1, 2019 by Eileen

Korean-speaking readers will already know this, but others may not: the word beagle is an English loan word in Korean, spelled with an “L” sound at the end. If you change the final consonant, “beagle” turns into “tragedy.” So the Beagle Rescue Network becomes the Tragedy Rescue Network. Many of the dogs at the Beagle Rescue Network’s shelter in Nonsan, South Chungcheong Province, have sad tales behind them, but a Tragedy Rescue Network it’s not. When I joined longtime volunteer […]

Categories: activist profiles, animal rescue, animal rights, lost animals • Tags: animal rescue network korea, animal rights, beagle rescue network, CARE controversy, homeless animals, vivisection

Calling out violence: Is the world ready for Heeji Yi?

June 30, 2019 by Eileen

Heeji Yi has become an unstoppable force in the local animal rights scene. She’s attended protests, done vegan education at Cube of Truth events, and organized Save vigils for animals on their way to slaughter. This year she founded Direct Action Everywhere Seoul. Her first Save vigil, about a year ago, was for chickens. Since then she’s borne witness for pigs, cows and chickens—both in Gyeonggi Province, where she lives, and in Chungju, North Chungcheong Province, where her parents live. […]

Categories: activist profiles, animal rights • Tags: animal rights, anonymous for the voiceless, direct action everywhere, save movement, social justice activism, vegan activism

No offense, but …

April 6, 2019 by Eileen

Sometime around 2007, a woman I barely knew started a thread on a message board and addressed it to me. She made sure to tell me to fuck off in the subject line. Another member of the same site sent me a private message with the subject line “I found your picture.” The attachment showed a naked woman on all fours, eating her own diarrhea as it was coming out of her. Another sent me a butt plug and Vagisil. […]

Categories: internet bullying • Tags: animal abuse, cyberbullying, Dave's ESL

Leave a comment

Sad lessons learned: Pandora the lost Jindo dog, part 2

April 3, 2019 by Eileen

The search for Pandora brought some amazing people out to Seoul and beyond, and I learned a lot about lost dog behavior and how important it is to be persistent. We even got a volunteer to call a local TV station to see if a popular show called “Dongmul Nongjang” (“Animal Farm”) would help us find her and televise what we hoped would be a wonderful success story. With no leads, though, the TV station didn’t see much promise in […]

Categories: lost animals • Tags: lost dog search

Leave a comment

Refugee activist Yiombi Thona: ‘Lift them, don’t shift them’

February 16, 2019 by Eileen

It was a real honor to interview Yiombi Thona in 2014 for a special issue of Groove Korea to commemorate the magazine’s 100th edition. The theme was “100 expats who made a difference in Korea.” Even though the resulting article had to be cut short to fit the tight space, I’m happy to say Yiombi’s human rights work was part of that special issue. Yiombi doesn’t like the expression “refugee crisis,” saying it’s really a responsibility crisis. Refugees are nothing […]

Categories: activist profiles, human rights • Tags: human rights, refugee convention, refugees, yiombi thona

Cube of Truth: Fearless vegan activism in Seoul

February 7, 2019 by Eileen

When I started my first blog, years ago, one of my goals was to brainstorm thoughts about activism and social change. More specifically, vegan activism and activism for homeless animals. I couldn’t figure out how seemingly good people could allow the mass slaughter to continue. Why attempts to educate always seemed to end in failure. Why activist movements always seemed to fizzle out or turn into unrecognizable versions of themselves. That initial blog was a disaster. And it would be […]

Categories: animal rights • Tags: animal rights, anonymous for the voiceless seoul, cube of truth, social justice activism, vegan activism

Leave a comment

Sad lessons learned: Pandora the lost Jindo dog, part 1

February 7, 2019 by Eileen

When I put Pandora’s face on the internet in 2010 and encouraged strangers to adopt her, I was trying to help. Even though I never got to know her very well, and I wasn’t personally involved in her adoption, when I look at Pandora’s picture now I see a spectacular personal failure. After Pandora got lost in 2012, several months after her adoption from a private shelter in Daejeon, many people pitched in to look for her. Well, we got […]

Categories: lost animals • Tags: jindo adoption, jindo rescue, lost dog search, missing animals

Leave a comment