An animal rights group consisting of high school students, ‘Goman-Goman’, has received a lot of online attention in Korea, where more than 10,000 household animals are abandoned every year. Since this July, the group has been doing online animal protection campaign.
As a part of the campaign, the students made several UCC video clips that urge people to pay attention to abandoned dogs that are easily neglected and forgotten. The videos were uploaded on YouTube and currently more than twenty thousand viewers watched.
The campaign video also includes a song ‘So easily’ that reprimands people for how easily they abandon and forget their companion animals they once loved. A singer-songwriter ‘Show’ and an under musician ‘Bobae’ willingly participated in the music production after they had heard about the students’ activities on animal rights. Both professional musicians wrote and recorded the song, and it is set to be produced as a digital single presently.
Goman-Goman, consisting of several high school students living in Seoul, was organized in the summer of 2010 to raise peoples’ awareness of animal protection. “I have been working as a member of the Korean Animal Protection Society ever since I took care of an abandoned dog in preschool,” says Kim Jung Woo, a high school student and the founder of Goman-Goman. He says, “The name ‘Goman-Goman’ has a funny behind story. When we first established the organization, all the group members were no taller than 5.5 ft.” Goman-Goman means ‘almost the same’ in Korean. He made an additional remark, “Goman-Goman also has another meaning in Korean, ‘stop and stop’, that conveys the message that we should no longer abandon animals.”
Furthermore, during this summer, the volunteers of Goman-Goman conducted a flash mob at the streets of Hongdae to deliver the message of animal protection to many people. Their campaign grabbed the attention of many people as it became famous online. Thus, many animal lovers recognized Goman-Goman‘s hard work and eagerness to make changes for the better.
“To improve the conditions for abandoned dogs, we plan to come up with many other types of campaigns,” Kim Jung Woo says. “We do not really expect our campaigns to make a huge actual difference. We just want people to see that we take these matters seriously, and realize that it deserves more attention.”
