A landmark legal case about whether Donald Trump should be immune from criminal prosecution will be heard in Washington on Tuesday.
The Republican former president's lawyers will argue that the office of the White House shields him from his 2020 election fraud charges.
Mr Trump, who says he will attend, is accused by a special counsel of trying to overturn Joe Biden's victory.
The outcome of this hearing could have a huge impact on Mr Trump's future.
His lawyers are using the same defence in another set of election charges he faces in Georgia.
The issue is likely to end up in the US Supreme Court in the heat of a 2024 election campaign in which Mr Trump is favourite to win the Republican nomination.
Prolonged legal wrangles over immunity could delay his criminal trials beyond November's election where he is expected to face Democratic President Joe Biden.
The former president has for years cited presidential immunity in his efforts to thwart civil and criminal cases brought against him.
The US Constitution makes no mention of presidential immunity, although courts have generally supported the notion that government officials be protected from lawsuits.
There is no legal precedent, however, about the criminal prosecution of sitting or former presidents.
In legal filings ahead of this hearing, the special counsel prosecuting him, Jack Smith, warned the court that a failure to allow Mr Trump to be prosecuted "threatens to license presidents to commit crimes to remain in office".
The immunity defence was rejected by US District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan in December, who ruled that having served as president does not entitle him to a "lifelong 'get-out-of-jail-free' pass".
In a social media post on Monday Mr Trump argued that he "wasn't campaigning" when he challenged his election loss by Mr Biden and was acting in his capacity as president in identifying voter fraud.
The three-judge panel in Washington DC will hear the oral arguments at the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit but then rule at a later date.
The courtroom is just blocks away from the US Capitol, where his supporters rioted to stop Joe Biden from being certified as president in January 2021.
To bolster their case, Mr Trump's lawyers will point to his acquittal by the Senate at his impeachment for his actions leading up to that violence.
"Nor may a president face criminal prosecution based on conduct for which he was acquitted by the US Senate," says his appellate brief. "The indictment against President Trump is unlawful and unconstitutional. It must be dismissed."
A poll by CBS News suggests most Americans believe Mr Trump should not be protected from prosecution for actions he took while president.
The criminal trial in this election fraud case is scheduled for 4 March, but is on hold pending the ruling by the appeals court, which has two judges appointed by Democratic presidents and one by a Republican.
Whichever way the judges rule, the case is widely expected to end up in the US Supreme Court, where conservatives hold a 6-3 majority.
Last month, the top court dismissed a request by Mr Smith to expedite a ruling on Mr Trump's immunity claim.
The Supreme Court also ruled last month that it would hear an appeal by Mr Trump against the state of Colorado for barring him from the ballot due to a rarely cited insurrectionist clause of the US constitution.
The 34-year-old, who is also the first openly gay French prime minister, was appointed by President Emmanuel Macron.
French President Emmanuel Macron has appointed Gabriel Attal as the country’s new prime minister, making him the youngest and first openly gay official to hold the position.
The 34-year-old education minister was named to the post on Tuesday, and is one of the country’s most popular politicians, according to recent opinion polls.
‘’I know I can count on your energy and your commitment,” Macron posted on the social medial platform X in a message to Attal.
Attal replaces outgoing Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne who resigned on Monday amid a cabinet reshuffle as Macron hopes to give new momentum to the final three years of his presidency.
Under the French political system, the prime minister is appointed by the president and is held accountable to the parliament. Attal will be in charge of implementing domestic policy, most notably economic measures, and coordinating the government’s team of ministers.
Macron has had a year of thorny challenges, after pushing unpopular pension and immigration reforms in 2023. His move to get Attal on board is being seen as a boost of popularity before the European Parliament elections in June.
‘Rising star’
“Attal, by all accounts, is an interesting choice, across the political spectrum,” said Al Jazeera’s Natacha Butler, reporting from Paris, adding that the young prime minister is “something of a surprise nomination”.
The 34-year-old is considered a “rising star” in French politics and “clearly Emmanuel Macron is hoping that Gabriel Attal is going to help revitalise his government,” she said.
“Gabriel Attal is a bit like the Macron of 2017,” said Member of Parliament Patrick Vignal, referring to when Macron first took office as the youngest head of state in modern French history.
“Most politicians and MPs do agree that [Attal] is a very skilled and good communicator, that he is an ambitious politician,” Al Jazeera’s Butler said.
“How he will be as a prime minister, though, remains to be seen. It’s certainly going to be challenging for him because a big problem for French President Emmanuel Macron is he has no parliamentary majority. So any prime minister has a very difficult task to try and bring all sides together in order to try and push through any legislation on behalf of the president.”
Macron has faced off against a more turbulent parliament after he lost an absolute majority shortly after being reelected in 2022.
Opinion polls show the president is trailing far-right leader Marine Le Pen’s party by around eight to 10 percentage points.
A familiar face
Attal rose to prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic, when he was named government spokesperson, and has made appearances in public with ease.
While young, Attal still has a lengthy history in French politics, joining the Socialist Party when he was 17. He would later be named as a junior minister in the Ministry of Economics and Finance, before being made education minister in 2023.
Despite his left-leaning past, Attal’s first move as education minister was to ban the Muslim abaya dress in state schools, making him popular among conservatives.
He was outed as gay by an old school associate in 2018, when he was in a relationship with Stephane Sejourne, Macron’s former political adviser.
French opposition leaders see Attal’s appointment as hardly momentous, even counterproductive.
“Elisabeth Borne, Gabriel Attal or someone else, I don’t care; it will just be the same policies,” Socialist Party leader Olivier Faure told France Inter radio.
“By appointing Gabriel Attal … Emmanuel Macron wants to cling to his popularity in opinion polls to alleviate the pain of an interminable end to his reign,” said Jordan Bardella, the 28-year-old leader of Le Pen’s National Rally party. “Instead, he risks taking the short-lived education minister with him in his fall.” Attal will go toe-to-toe in advance of the European elections against Bardella.
South Korea’s parliament has voted to ban the production and sale of dog meat, in a decision campaigners hailed as a “historic victory” for animal welfare.
The country’s national assembly voted overwhelmingly to ban the breeding, butchery, distribution and sale of dogs for their meat on Tuesday, after years of pressure at home and abroad.
While the law does not criminalise consumption, the measures will effectively bring an end to eating the animals, a practice some say stretches back centuries.
The ban, which passed with 208 votes in support and two abstentions, will be enforced in 2027 after a three-year grace period. Violators will face up to three years in prison or a maximum fine of 30m won (£17,900). The law includes compensation packages to help businesses move out of the industry, media reports said.
Eating dog meat – which is often served as part of a stew to make it more tender – was once seen as a way to stave off fatigue during hot summers. Consumption has slumped dramatically in recent decades, particularly among younger South Koreans who consider dogs as family pets.
In a survey released this week by the Seoul-based thinktank Animal Welfare Awareness, Research and Education, more than 94% of respondents said they had not eaten dog meat in the past year, while 93% said they would not eat it in the future.
Despite the sharp decline in consumption, about 1,150 farms continue to breed dogs for meat, while 1,600 restaurants sell dog meat dishes in South Korea, according to the agriculture ministry.
Campaigners have long targeted the industry as cruel, with dogs electrocuted or hanged when slaughtered for their meat. Traders, who in November threatened to unleash 2 million dogs near the presidential office in Seoul to protest against the anticipated ban, say they have made the slaughtering process more humane.
“This is history in the making,” said JungAh Chae, the executive director of Humane Society International/Korea. “I never thought I would see in my lifetime a ban on the cruel dog meat industry in South Korea, but this historic win for animals is testament to the passion and determination of our animal protection movement.
“We reached a tipping point where most Korean citizens reject eating dogs and want to see this suffering consigned to the history books, and today our policymakers have acted decisively to make that a reality. While my heart breaks for all the millions of dogs for whom this change has come too late, I am overjoyed that South Korea can now close this miserable chapter in our history and embrace a dog-friendly future.”
The movement to make selling dog meat illegal has gathered momentum under the president, Yoon Suk-yeol, an animal lover who has adopted several dogs and cats with his wife, Kim Keon-hee, who has also criticised the industry.
Gabriel Attal has been named France's next prime minister, as Emmanuel Macron aims to revive his presidency with a new government.
At 34, he is the youngest PM in modern French history, outranking even Socialist Laurent Fabius who was 37 when he was appointed by François Mitterrand in 1984.
Mr Attal replaces Élisabeth Borne, who resigned after 20 months in office.
Throughout that time she struggled with a lack of a majority in parliament.
Gabriel Attal, who is currently education minister, certainly makes an eye-catching appointment.
He will now have the task of leading the French government into important European Parliament elections in June.
His rise has been rapid. Ten years ago he was an obscure adviser in the health ministry, and a card-carrying member of the Socialists.
He will also be the first openly gay occupant of Hôtel Matignon. He has a civil partnership with another Macron whizz-kid, the MEP Stéphane Sejourné.
BERTRAND GUAY/AFP
But given the difficulties of the president's second term - and the growing challenge from the nationalist right - is "eye-catching" alone going to cut it?
Handsome, youthful, charming, popular, cogent, Mr Attal certainly comes to office trailing clouds of glory - much, let it be said, like his mentor and role-model the president himself.
But like many go-getters of his generation, he was inspired by Emmanuel Macron's idea of breaking apart the old left-right divide and re-writing the codes of French politics.
In the wake of Macron's 2017 election, Mr Attal became a member of parliament, and it was there that his brilliance as a debater - easily the best of the neophyte Macronite intake - brought him to the president's attention.
At 29, he became the youngest ever minister in the Fifth Republic with a junior post at education; from 2020 he was government spokesman and his face began to register with the voters; after President Macron's re-election, he was briefly budget minister and then took over at education last July.
It was in this post that Mr Attal confirmed to the president that he has what it takes, acting with no-nonsense determination to end September's row over Muslim abaya robes by simply banning them in schools.
He led a campaign against bullying - he himself was a victim, he says - at the elite École alsacienne in Paris, and took on the education establishment with his proposal to experiment with school uniform.
JACQUES DEMARTHON/AFP
And, all the while, he managed to buck the normal trends by actually becoming popular among the public.
Polls show that he is by far the most admired member of the Macron government - competing at the same level as the president's main enemy, the nationalist Marine Le Pen and her youthful colleague Jordan Bardella.
And there, of course, is the heart of it.
By drawing Gabriel Attal from his pack of ministers, Mr Macron is using an ace to outplay the queen and her jack. But will it work?
The drawn-out process of naming him - everyone knew a reshuffle was coming but it took forever - shows that if President Macron is well aware of the weakness of his current position, he has also been in deep uncertainty over how to address it.
Reuters
More than one commentator has made the obvious point that what the public wants above all now is not so much a rearrangement of faces at the top, but a new sense of purpose to the Macron presidency.
But as things stand, Mr Attal will face exactly the same problems as did his long-suffering predecessor Élisabeth Borne.
These are: a hard-right opposition that is surging in popularity and looks set to win easily in June's European elections; a National Assembly with no in-built majority for the government, making every new law a struggle; and a president who seems unable to define what he wants his second term to achieve.
On top of which, the new prime minister will have a problem all of his own - which is establishing his authority over such heavyweights as Gérald Darmanin and Bruno Le Maire.
And what is the plan, some are also asking, if as seems likely Mr Macron's party loses heavily in the European elections?
Normally that would be the occasion for a prime ministerial replacement, to give a new élan for the second half of the mandate. But, as things stand, that card has already been played, and in the event of a defeat in June Gabriel Attal risks drifting on as a discredited loser.
Even opposition figures recognise that he is a class act. He is respected and liked in the National Assembly.
But there are also questions about what he actually stands for. The suspicion for many is that he is all smiles and verbiage, much like the man to whom he owes his career.
As the president's nominee, he is the wunderkind's wunderkind. But if he is only Macron's mini-me, the marvel could prove a mirage.
Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, said on Tuesday that “there is nothing more atrocious and preposterous” than the lawsuit filed in the international court of justice (ICJ) accusing Israel of genocidal actions against Palestinians in the Gaza war.
Speaking to the visiting US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, Reuters reports Herzog censured South Africa for bringing the case, which is due to begin hearings on Thursday, and thanked Washington for its support of Israel.
More than 23,000 Palestinians are said by the health ministry there to have been killed by Israeli military action in the 13-and-a-half weeks since 7 October, with more than 85% of Palestinians in Gaza displaced from their homes by order of the Israeli military. Independent experts estimate as much as 40% of the housing in Gaza has already been damaged or destroyed by the Israeli assault.
The UN has previously said that 40% of the population in Gaza is at risk of starvation, with limited humanitarian aid getting into the territory. Israel insists on inspecting all aid delivered, and has periodically cut off utilities and communications within Gaza.
Here is a photograph issued of the meeting between Israel’s president Isaac Herzog and US secretary of state Antony Blinken in Tel Aviv.
During the public portion of the meeting Herzog said a lawsuit filed in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) accusing Israel of genocide against Palestinians in its Gaza offensive was “atrocious and preposterous”.
Reuters reports he went on to say:
Actually our enemies, Hamas, in their charter, call for the destruction of our nation, the State of Israel – the only nation-state of the Jewish people.
We will be there at the International Court of Justice and will present proudly our case of using self-defence under our most inherent right under international humanitarian law.
Herzog added Israel must win “because it is a war that affects international values and the values of the free world.”
Israel launched its campaign after the surprise attack inside southern Israel by Hamas on 7 October which killed about 1,200 people, and during which an estimated 240 people were seized and abducted into Gaza as hostages. Just over 100 of those hostages have subsequently been released.
In the last 45 minutes a series of warning sirens have sounded in northern Israel, including at kibbutz Yiftah, Safed and Birya.
Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, said on Tuesday that “there is nothing more atrocious and preposterous” than the lawsuit filed in the international court of justice (ICJ) accusing Israel of genocidal actions against Palestinians in the Gaza war.
Speaking to the visiting US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, Reuters reports Herzog censured South Africa for bringing the case, which is due to begin hearings on Thursday, and thanked Washington for its support of Israel.
More than 23,000 Palestinians are said by the health ministry there to have been killed by Israeli military action in the 13-and-a-half weeks since 7 October, with more than 85% of Palestinians in Gaza displaced from their homes by order of the Israeli military. Independent experts estimate as much as 40% of the housing in Gaza has already been damaged or destroyed by the Israeli assault.
The UN has previously said that 40% of the population in Gaza is at risk of starvation, with limited humanitarian aid getting into the territory. Israel insists on inspecting all aid delivered, and has periodically cut off utilities and communications within Gaza.
The Times of Israel is reporting that “a high-level Israeli delegation” arrived for talks in Cairo last night, which it says is an indication that “indirect talks” about freeing hostages held by Hamas in Gaza are “back on track”.
Meanwhile, some families of Israeli hostages being held have gathered for a planned protest at the Kerem Shalom border crossing. They are intending to draw attention to the plight of the estimated more than 130 people still being held after being abducted from southern Israel on 7 October.
Shai Wenkert, whose 22-year-old son is a captive, told the Ynet news site: “We will arrive at Kerem Shalom crossing to prevent the entry of goods and medications to the Gaza Strip.”
In a statement Israel’s military has said it has expanded its ground operation in the city of Khan Younis inside the Gaza Strip.
The IDF claims that “dozens of terrorists were killed” and “large quantities of weapons and underground terror tunnel shafts were located”. The claims have not been independently verified.
In the statement, issued on the Telegram messaging app, it said:
Over the past day, IDF troops expanded ground operations in Khan Younis and conducted strikes in which approximately 40 terrorists were killed. In addition, significant terror tunnel shafts were located, as well as a variety of weapons, including 12 AK-47 rifles, four loaded RPG launchers, dozens of grenades, cartridges, and military vests.
The statement also claimed to have “conducted a targeted raid on a military compound in Khan Younis” and also said that “the Israeli navy also struck military posts, storage facilities, and vessels used by Hamas’s naval forces”.
Israel says that 182 of its soldiers have so far been killed during fighting inside the Gaza Strip. The health ministry in Gaza says more than 23,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli military activity since 7 October. It has not been possible for journalists to independently verify casualty figures issued during the conflict.
Israel’s assault on Gaza intensified over the past 24 hours, the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has said in its latest update, with 249 Palestinians killed, and another 510 injured, according to figures from the territory’s ministry of health.
It said the Israeli offensive in central Gaza and in Khan Younis in the south was having a particularly awful impact, with “rapidly rising casualties” and “devastating consequences for tens of thousands of civilians” many of whom were already displaced having fled fighting in northern Gaza.
The deadliest Israeli strikes on Monday included one on residential houses in Deir al-Balah, in which 10 people were reportedly killed and tens injured, and one on UNRWA preparatory school of al-Maghazi, where displaced people were sheltering and where an unknown number were killed.
It also said Israeli authorities were denying permission to OCHA and the World Health Organization to deliver urgent medical supplies. It said:
For instance, on 8 January, a planned mission by OCHA and WHO to deliver urgent medical supplies to the Central Drug Store in Gaza City and al-Awda hospital in Jabalia, as well as planned missions to deliver vital fuel to water and sanitation facilities in Gaza City and the north, have been denied by the Israeli authorities.
This marked the fifth denial of a mission to al-Awda hospital in Jabalia and Central Drug Store in Gaza City since 26 December, leaving five hospitals in northern Gaza without access to life-saving medical supplies and equipment.
The Israeli military has published the names of four soldiers who have died in Gaza, bringing the total number of those killed in the territory to 182.
The dead were named as Sgt 1st Class (res) Gavriel Bloom, Sgt 1st Class (res) David Schwartz, Sgt 1st Class (res) Yair Hexter, and Sgt Roi Tal.
Graphic video has emerged from the West Bank, showing three men being shot dead at close range by Israeli forces on Monday night in the city of Tulkarem.
The videos, which are circulating on social media and could not be verified, show soldiers continuing to fire at an injured Palestinian lying on the ground and an Israeli armoured vehicle running over one of the bodies of the dead men before halting and then continuing over the body, dragging it for several metres.
The Israeli military (IDF) claimed the men were militants, according to Al Jazeera. The broadcaster said that the militant Tulkarem Brigade said only one of those killed was a fighter. Neither claim could be verified.
A fourth man was reportedly shot in the leg and arrested by the Israeli military.
Al Jazeera said clashes broke out in Tulkarem after the IDF went into arrest a wanted Palestinian fighter.
The city, and much of the West Bank, have been the scene of repeated clashes since the Hamas invasion of 7 October, as the IDF carries out raids.
A total of 329 Palestinians have been killed by the IDF and Israeli settlers in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, since 7 October, according to the UN. The dead include 84 children.
More than 4,000 Palestinians, including more than 600 children, have been injured in the West Bank.
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, is in Tel Aviv, where he will try to convince the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to begin serious negotiations on postwar governance in Gaza, do more to protect civilians in Gaza, and allow more aid into the territory.
“I will press on the absolute imperative to do more to protect civilians and to do more to make sure that humanitarian assistance is getting into the hands of those who need it,” said Blinken, who has spent the past two days holding talks with Arab leaders.
Israeli officials, meanwhile, will tell Blinken that civilians in Gaza will not be allowed back to the north of the territory unless more of the hostages held by Hamas are released, Axios reported citing two senior Israeli officials.
The US has offered staunch support to Israel since the outbreak of its war with Hamas three months ago, but Netanyahu has angered Washington by so far refusing to offer any detailed public plans for the governance of Gaza when Israel’s military offensive ends. He has rejected the US’s preferred option, the creation of unified Palestinian state comprising of the West Bank and Gaza.
Israel has also come under growing pressure from the US, its closest ally, and Arab leaders to scale back its assault on Gaza.
The US president, Joe Biden, confronted on Monday by protesters shouting “ceasefire now” while visiting an historic Black church in South Carolina, said he had been “quietly” working to encourage Israel to ease its attacks and “significantly get out of Gaza”.
Israeli officials have said the operation is entering a new phase of more targeted warfare, but there has been no apparent respite in the fighting. The death toll in Gaza has continued to mount steadily, with at least 23,084 Palestinians killed and thousands more buried under the rubble of destroyed buildings.
Blinken is also on a mission to prevent the conflict from escalating further; in the latest signs the war is spreading beyond the borders of Israel and Gaza, Israel killed a top commander of Hamas’s ally Hezbollah in south Lebanon on Monday as well as a Hamas commander in Syria.
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the crisis in the Middle East with me, Helen Livingstone.
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, is in Tel Aviv, where he will hold meetings aimed at persuading the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to scale back Israel’s assault on Gaza, and begin serious negotiations on postwar governance in Gaza as well as doing more to protect civilians there.
Israeli officials, meanwhile, will tell Blinken that civilians in Gaza will not be allowed back to the north of the territory unless more of the hostages held by Hamas are released, Axios reported citing two senior Israeli officials.
Blinken, who flew in late on Monday from the Saudi oasis town of AlUla, has spent the past two days holding talks with Arab leaders. He said he had found a “clear interest in the region” in normalising relations with Israel, but only if the war ended and a clear pathway to Palestinian statehood could be found.
On his fourth trip to the Middle East in the three months Blinken is also attempting to stop the conflict spreading beyond Israel and Gaza; Israel killed a top commander of Hamas’s ally Hezbollah in south Lebanon on Monday as well as a Hamas commander in Syria.
More on that soon. In other key developments:
At least 23,084 Palestinians have been killed and 58,926 have been injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, according to the latest figures by the Gaza health ministry on Monday. The ministry, which is run by Hamas, said 249 Palestinians were killed and 510 were wounded in the previous 24 hours.
The UN rights office has said it is “very concerned” by the number of journalists killed in the war in Gaza, a day after two Al Jazeera reporters were killed in an alleged Israeli strike on their car. The killing of journalists “must be thoroughly, independently investigated to ensure strict compliance with international law, and violations prosecuted”, the UN office said on Monday. Meanwhile, Israel’s supreme court has rejected a request from international media organisations to allow journalists to report in Gaza.
The only hospital remaining in central Gaza is on the verge of shutting downamid intense fighting that has engulfed the area, a UN spokesperson has said. Medics, patients and displaced people have been fleeing from Al-Aqsa hospital in Deir al-Balah, according to witnesses. The Israeli military has dropped leaflets designating areas surrounding Al-Aqsa hospital in Deir al-Balah as a “red zone”, the International Rescue Committee said.
Three Palestinians have been shot dead by Israeli forces in the Israeli-occupied West Bank city of Tulkarm, the Palestinian health ministry said on Monday.
Joe Biden’s speech at Mother Emanuel church in Charleston, South Carolina, was interrupted by pro-Palestine activists, who called for a ceasefire in Gaza. As the protest dissipated, Biden said: “I have been quietly working with the Israeli government to get them to reduce and significantly get out of Gaza and using all that I can to do that.”
Israel has killed a senior military commander in Hezbollah’s elite Radwan force, Wissam Hassan al Tawil, in an air strike in southern Lebanon approximately 6km from the border. It comes amid warnings from Lebanese security sources that the assassination could lead to a further escalation in the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Shia armed movement.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it has killed a Hamas operative who it claimed was responsible for rockets attacks against Israel from Syria. Hassan Hakashah was killed by Israeli forces in Beit Jinn in Syria, the IDF said in a statement on Monday.
Israel is carrying out an unprecedented wave of deadly strikes in Syria targeting cargo trucks, infrastructure and people involved in Iran’s weapons lifeline to its proxies in the region, sources have told Reuters. The sources said Israel had shifted strategies following the 7 October attack by Hamas fighters into Israeli territory and the ensuing Israeli bombing campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon.
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement has released video footage it claimed showed an Israeli hostage taken during the 7 October attacks. The hostage has been named by Israeli media as Elad Katzir, 47, from Nir Oz kibbutz.
UN experts have demanded accountability for sexual violence allegedly carried out by Hamas militants against Israeli civilians during the 7 October attacks, saying that mounting evidence of rapes and genital mutilation point to possible crimes against humanity. Israeli authorities have opened an investigation into possible sexual crimes during the most deadly attack on Israel in its history.
South Korea has passed a new law, which aims to end the slaughter and selling of dogs for their meat by 2027.
The law aims to end the centuries-old practice of eating dog meat.
Dog meat has fallen out of favour with diners over the past few decades. Young people especially shun it.
Under the law, raising or slaughtering dogs for consumption will be banned, as will distributing or selling dog meat. Those found guilty of doing so could be sent to jail.
Those butchering dogs could face up to three years in prison, while those who raise dogs for meat or sell dog meat could serve a maximum of two years. However, the consumption of dog meat itself will not be illegal.
The new legislation will come into effect in three years' time, giving farmers and restaurant owners time to find alternative sources of employment and income. They will have to submit a plan to phase out their businesses to their local authorities.
The government has promised to fully support dog meat farmers, butchers and restaurant owners, whose businesses will be forced to close, though the details of what compensation will be offered have yet to be worked through.
According to government statistics, South Korea had around 1,600 dog meat restaurants and 1,150 dog farms in 2023.
Dog meat stew, called "boshintang", is considered a delicacy among some older South Koreans, but the meat is no longer popular with young people.
Getty Images
According to a Gallup poll last year, only 8% of people said they had tried dog meat in the past 12 months, down from 27% in 2015. Less than a fifth of those polled said they supported the consumption of the meat.
On Tuesday lunchtime in Seoul, down an alleyway with several dog meat restaurants, a handful of older people were tucking into the stew and the generational divide was stark.
Kim Seon-ho, 86, was disappointed by the ban. "We've eaten this since the Middle Ages. Why stop us from eating our traditional food?" he said. "If you ban dog meat then you should ban beef."
But Lee Chae-yeon, a 22-year-old student, said the ban was necessary to promote animal rights. "More people have pets today," she said. "Dogs are like family now and it's not nice to eat our family."
Previous governments, dating back to the 1980s, have pledged to ban dog meat, but failed to make progress. The current President Yoon Suk Yeol and the First Lady Kim Keon Hee are known animal lovers. The couple owns six dogs, and Ms Kim has called for the practice of eating dogs to end.
Animal rights groups, which have long been pushing for the ban, praised the outcome of Tuesday's vote.
Jung Ah Chae, the executive director of the Humane Society in Korea, said she was surprised to see the ban in her lifetime. "While my heart breaks for all the millions of dogs for whom this change has come too late, I am overjoyed that South Korea can now close this miserable chapter in our history and embrace a dog friendly future", she said.
Dog meat farmers had campaigned against the ban. They argued that, given the declining popularity among young people, the practice should be allowed to die out naturally over time. Many farmers and restaurateurs are elderly and said it would be difficult for them to switch livelihoods so late in life.
One dog farmer, Joo Yeong-bong, told the BBC the industry was in despair.
"In 10 years, the industry would have disappeared. We're in our 60s and 70s and now we have no choice but to lose our livelihoods", he said, adding that this was "an infringement of people's freedom to eat what they like".
One dog meat restaurant owner in her 60s, Mrs Kim, told the BBC she was frustrated by the ban, and blamed it on the rise in the number of people in South Korea having pets.
"Young people these days don't get married, so they think of pets as family, but food is food. We should accept dog meat but raise and slaughter them in a hygienic environment", she said.
"Other countries like China and Vietnam eat dogs, so why are we banning it?", she added.
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