Foreigners will be invited to try specially prepared dog meat juice outside the World Cup stadium in a bid to fight "prejudice" against the South Korean delicacy, restaurateurs said Friday.
"We plan to develop canned dog meat tonic juice, which football fans can enjoy in their stadium seats while watching games," said Choi Han-Gwon, a leader of a national association of dog meat restaurants.

"They will enjoy it instead of Coke," he said.

The association will recruit volunteers among foreigners to help hand out free dog meat juice in disposable containers outside the Sangam Stadium in Seoul, he said.

"They will help us explaining to foreigners about the innocence of consuming dog meat," he said.

But he flatly denied local press reports that the association would offer up dog meat hamburgers and sandwiches during the football event.

"We don't want sensationalism or excessive publicity about dog meat as we fear that there would be a backlash from the government," Choi said.

Earlier this month, the association invited French high-school students living in Seoul to a dog-meat tasting event held at a restaurant in the capital and many of them said they loved the taste.

The old habit of consuming dog meat has become a hot issue once again after animal rights activists including former French actress Brigitte Bardot urged the French team and others to boycott the World Cup.

South Korea will co-host the World Cup with Japan from May 31 to June 30.

Dog restaurants were told to close or move to the backstreets when Seoul hosted the 1988 Olympics but no similar move is planned for the World Cup.

The authorities say the practice is slowly disappearing in Korea.

But about one million dogs are sold every year for food in South Korea and 92 percent of men aged 20 and above and 68 percent of adult women have tasted dog meat, a recent survey showed.