A video clip showing a police conscript severely beating a dog he had been keeping in barracks has triggered an outcry among Netizens after spreading on the Web.

The 30-second clip shows the conscript fetter the dog to a bunk-bed ladder and hit the defenseless animal in the face with a slipper and his bare hands and strangling it. In the background can be heard the giggling of other conscripts watching the show. A Seoul Metropolitan Police official said the clip shows an incident that occurred in the barracks of a police office in December 2004 and everyone involved has left the force.

The clip has spread rapidly since the man who shot the footage put it up on his homepage last weekend. He has professed shock at the outrage generated so long after the fact. "We kept one of the base worker's dogs for a little bit inside the barracks,” he said, adding it was beaten to punish it for defecating there. The man has pleaded for sympathy for his own plight, saying he receives 300-400 abusive text messages and calls a day that typically call him names and say he is “worse than a dog.”

(englishnews@chosun.com )