Los Angeles Police Department has failed to train two Korean Jindo dogs for police work as two dogs from the breed that is South Korea’s 53rd national treasure “didn’t have enough focus, drive or consistency needed,” LA daily news reported.

The dogs, named Daehan and Mingook, were given by the Korean government to LAPD last October as candidates to work alongside often-used police dog breeds such as bloodhounds, Dutch shepherds and Belgian Malinois.

They were trained to work as weapons detection or drug sniffer dogs, but did not perform consistently when taken out in the field.

“He was just not your typical working breed, not your typical ‘I want to go out and do this because I have to do this’ dog,” said Mingook’s trainer, Jeff Miller.

Miller added that the female dog Daehan even refused to work and was more interested in curling up in someone’s lap.

The report said that the Korean military also tested the Jindo dogs for field work, but stopped after running into similar problems, quoting Chang Y. Lee, president of the Korean American Federation of Los Angeles, who facilitated the donation of the dogs.

Lee who still hopes to see the breed qualify as police dogs in future said: “For the Jindo to successfully make it in the LAPD system, or even the Korean system, is for the people to emphatically breed the dog for certain characteristics.”



By Lee Woo-young 
(wylee@heraldcorp.com)