Companion-Animal Abuse in South Korea: Welfare and Veterinary Implications from Criminal-Court Decisions (2003–2025)

Animal abuse directly compromises companion-animal welfare, causing pain, injury, neglect, and, in many cases, death. Although veterinary case series and welfare surveys offer clinical perspectives, far less is known about how abuse is documented in criminal-court decisions. This study analyzed 501 publicly available judgments issued under the South Korean Animal Protection Act between 2003 and 2025 to characterize the species involved, the abusive acts described, sentencing outcomes, and the visibility of veterinary information. Dogs were the predominant victims (63.9%), followed by a heterogeneous group of other or unspecified species (22.1%) and cats (14.0%). Blunt-force trauma (beating, kicking, or hitting with objects) was the most common coded act (92.0%), whereas neglect-related death (3.0%), asphyxiation (2.6%), and sharp-force trauma (2.4%) were recorded far less frequently. Most offenders received monetary fines (64.5%), with custodial sentences imposed in 14.1% of cases. Veterinary information was not consistently visible in the public legal record; a minimum of 7 of 501 decisions (1.4%) contained an unambiguous, explicit reference to veterinary involvement, and this floor estimate likely understates the true frequency, because many appellate summaries omitted the factual detail needed to determine whether veterinary records or expert opinions had been presented at earlier stages. The results therefore characterize how prosecuted abuse is represented in publicly accessible court records rather than the full spectrum of animal abuse or the severity of suffering experienced by the animals. When situated within the limited but growing international literature, the South Korean findings resemble other judgment-based datasets in foregrounding overt violence more readily than chronic or diffuse forms of welfare harm.