WARNING: The content in this story may be upsetting to some readers.

It's a long way from South Korea to Simcoe County, but that's a journey that three dogs made as part of an international rescue effort.

Barry Wilson-Smythe went in search of answers after he saw an online ad describing dog torture in South Korea. It was that ad, which led him to South Korean activist Nami Kim.

“I forced myself to watch the worst of the worst, and really to understand exactly what's happening to them," he says.

Kim has spent the last five years fighting against the torture of dogs in the county. The animal is eaten in South Korea. Kim and Wilson-Smythe don’t agree with the practice, but they’re more concerned by the pre-slaughter torture.

"It's the way they slaughter the dogs,” says Kim. “They hang the dogs. They beat up the dogs."

Korean culture suggests the more torture a dog faces, the better it tastes.

"They are thrown into pots to boil alive."

Kim says animal rights laws don't protect these dogs, because they are raised as livestock.

"Once we found out how extreme the torture in South Korea is, we knew we had to do something," says Wilson-Smythe.

A few months ago Wilson-Smythe and his husband adopted their first dog from South Korea.

She is one of many Kim has rescued from slaughter houses. She tries to get them shutdown because of health or environmental violations.

Their new family member is still a little nervous around humans and it took a while for her to come outside, but that's changing.

"Every day we notice something more she does. She comes out a little bit more."

Just last week, he and his husband brought in two more dogs from South Korea. They are being fostered in the hopes other Canadians might want to take them home.

“They do not need to be abused and tortured in order to eat dog meat. It needs to end all together, but the torture needs to end right now.”

According to Kim, some slaughter houses claim to electrocute them quickly but says in five years of investigating she has only found one that used that method.

If you want to learn about the adoption process, you can click here.