Kang Sung-il buys Sancho, his Pomeranian, a toy every business trip and will dress it up in a new $50 suit when he visits his mother this Lunar New Year holiday.
Kang and his wife say children are too expensive and bring too much pressure. Instead they have opted to shower Sancho with love and gifts.
They are not alone. South Korea's pet industry is booming, fueled by the same factors — the high cost of education and housing as well as extremely long working days — that have made the country's birth rate, at 1.05 births per woman, the lowest in the world.