A woman in her 40s was handed a four-month prison term with two years of probation and 40 hours of community service for throwing her dogs from an apartment balcony, according to the Yeongwol Branch of Chuncheon District Court on Thursday.

The 49-year-old, whose identity has been withheld, was charged with breaching the Animal Protection Act, which stipulates that killing an animal without justification shall be punished.

It was reported that the woman threw two of her one to two-month-old puppies from the veranda of her third-floor apartment in Taebaek, Gangwon Province, on August 28 last year, at around 5:30 p.m. because they failed to control their bowels.

One of the dogs died immediately. The other survived the fall and was taken to a nearby veterinary hospital but died during treatment, according to reports.

The court said the nature of the crime was “very serious,” considering that the defendant had used a cruel method of punishment that resulted in the death of two young puppies without having any satisfactory reason for doing so.

Meanwhile, South Korea has seen a sharp rise in the number of animal abuse cases in recent years.

There were 1,072 violations in 2021, a threefold increase from the tally of 303 in 2016, according to data released by the Korean National Police Agency in October 2022.