I cannot answer for North Korea. I have doubts about independent verification being possible.
~~ South Korea has documented evidence. Here is one photographers photos of a dog farm. https://www.sophiegamand.com/dogmeatfarm ~~
Edit: Sorry, that farmer had fighting dogs, not meat dogs.
Given that North Korea can mass produce artillery shells, I don’t doubt they can mass produce canned food of amy type they can access.
Dogs would be more expensive to farm chickens, cows and pigs. They eat meat, so you need to produce meat to produce meat. It doesn’t seem like a sensible thing for North Korea to be doing to feed its soldiers rations.
In time where food is scarce it makes sense, but to actually farm them. They would have to be farming them as a ‘luxury’ product, in which case they aren’t going to be using it for rations.
I personally hope it’s not true simply because I like dogs so much. And I don’t think if it’s more expensive than other meats that it would be given to rank and file soldiers.
That said, I could see it being something special some of them brought from home (I know some us vets who would take what food from home they could, it didn’t last long but it was something from home)
I could also see it being like a perk of sending the soldiers to another country. Like “yeah, these guys are fighting over there but they get these cool perks!” but given I have very little information about the north Korean military, I have no idea if either of those things would even be an option.
Regardless, it’s 100% not a standard military ration.
In the USA, we often feed dogs grains. I don’t know that dogs would cost more to raise as livestock than cows. Cows eat a lot.
They also produce much more meat. They also eat indigestible (to humans) food. Cows stomachs can eat and gain calories from grass in a way humans or dogs can’t, for dogs and humans grass is fibre and doesn’t provide many calories.
Cows are great in this case for food security, ground that would struggle to produce much grains or vegetables can still produce grass. If you feed your cows a lot of grains the food security aspect is nullified. Even feeding dogs grains for a country like North Korea that struggles with food security is not a rational unless the dogs provide a benefit like guard dogs etc. During World War Two many people in UK cities killed their dogs when rationing was put in place (not to eat) purely because it was suggested the pets would consume food that could have been human food.
