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PART I:
SOCIOHISTORICAL BACKGROUND
International adoption has become a highly visible and institutionalized practice wherein it is not uncommon for most North Americans to have at least second- or thirdhand knowledge of a family who has adopted from Asia, Latin America, or one of the former Eastern Bloc countries. However, public awareness about the precipitating conditions that place children in the diaspora as orphans is generally limited to textbook or evening news summaries of poverty, war, or gender preferences in sending countries.
The following essays examine the institutionalization of Korean international adoption from equally important and differing lenses and from both sides of the Pacific. Dong Soo Kim examines the complex social, economic, and political history that divided Korea and devastated families. He provides a birth-country perspective and context that is virtually absent in the literature. Catherine Ceniza Choyâs exploration of independent adoption schemes through archival research leads her to âdocuments that speak to the multiple controversies surrounding international and transracial adoption.â Both authors illuminate the pivotal and dichotomous role that the United States has played in relationship to Korean adoption. Kim describes the United Statesâ interest in the political tug-of-war over North and South Korea, which positioned children as victims, measured against the humanitarian responses of adoptive American families. Ceniza Choy further juxtaposes adoption agenciesâ responsibility in guarding âthe best interests of the childâ against the commodification of Korean children. The contributorsâ candid analyses of the context of Korean adoption provide a firm grounding and direction for the collection.
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Chapter 1
A Country Divided: Contextualizing Adoption from a Korean Perspective
Dong Soo Kim
Korea is a small peninsula in Far East Asia with a little over seventy-one million people living in 85,228 square miles (CIA, 2005). Forcefully divided for sixty years, Korea is the only remaining vestige of the old East-West ideological conflicts in the world today. Once known as âa Hermit Kingdomâ to the Western world, the nationâs history goes back to 2,333 BC with her distinctive cultural heritage throughout various political triumphs and turmoil for many centuries. For the past half-century, Korea has experienced a tragic civil war, dire poverty, rapid social change, vigorous industrialization, and political unrest, all in the context of national division and conflict between the North and South. Historical development of this divided small peninsula has been the stage on which the drama of massive and permanent child transfer and placement was performed beyond national, racial, and cultural boundaries to create an international adoption practice in the global community.
The purpose of this chapter is to review the overall context of international adoption from the Korean perspective. Koreaâs historical background, sociocultural environment, perspectives on adoption, global trends, associated issues and problems, and recent new developments will be discussed. Statistical data and scholarly literature also will be referenced.
HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL BACKGROUND
Korea has been a traditional agro-feudal society with its own language, culture, history, and beliefs for many centuries. Traditionally, Korean cultural patterns have been strongly influenced by Confucianism, even though Shamanism and Buddhism were also prevalent as religions. The old society has been singularly characterized by patriarchy with a heavy emphasis on family tradition and filial piety. In a patriarchal society, the family system has a male-dominated and extended family structure, with built-in provisions for total allegiance and care for all members. In such a cultural context, blood ties have been highly valued to preserve the family system. Adoption, when it occurred, was simply to continue the family bloodline, usually among relatives or within the same surnames. Accordingly, adopting a child of nonrelated or unknown origin was a very foreign concept. Furthermore, the adoption of a child born from âwrong bloodâ or mixed blood was especially not culturally acceptable (Kim, 1978b).
The traditional culture was drastically shattered, however, as Korean society experienced massive destruction and rapid changes in the last century. In fact, Korea has been invaded and intruded upon by powerful neighboring countries, like China, Japan, and Russia. Korea served often as a battleground among competing and invading foreign powers, and yet it managed to maintain its political independence and cultural identity for so long.
In 1910, the Japanese Empire forcefully annexed and colonized Korea for thirty-six years, destroying much of Korean traditional culture and national spirit. With the end of World War II, Korea was liberated from Japanese rule, but the North was occupied by USSR forces and the South by the United States, thus creating the frontline of an East-West ideological cold war. The South embraced a fragile form of democracy with an American capitalistic system and the North the Stalinist state of Communism, with central planning and controlled economy system. The division of the country along the thirty-eighth parallel begot the separation or loss of many family members.
KOREAN CONFLICT AND ITS IMPACT ON FAMILIES
In June 1950, the Korean War broke out between the North (Democratic Peoplesâ Republic of Korea, or North Korea, for short) and the South (Republic of Korea or South Korea). The United States and sixteen other nations soon joined the war on behalf of South Korea under the United Nationsâ sanction through the Security Council Resolution 83 (June 27, 1950), and in return Communist China (Peoplesâ Republic of China) soon supported North Korea with their âVolunteer Army.â This war lasted for three years with crisscrossing frontlines before the conflict came to an end with a military armistice agreement between the two camps. This brought massive destruction to the entire peninsula with about five million casualties. According to various statistical reports, it is estimated that the total deaths reached 2,800,000 among Koreans and non-Koreans, both combatants and civilians. Also, approximately 200,000 widows and 100,000 orphans were created by the war. About 80 percent of industries, public facilities, and transportation system were destroyed (Korean Institute of Military History, 2001; Wikipedia, 2005). The total number of U.S. military casualties alone reached 54,746 deaths and 103,284 wounds (Department of Defense, 2005). The ensuing chaos and hardships of the war brought much disintegration to the traditional family system. The greatest victims of this war, as in any military conflict, were children. There were hundreds of thousands of lost, abandoned, neglected, and orphaned children both in the North and South whose needs for care and support were unmet.
With the devastating obliteration and very limited social infrastructure, parentless children were crowded into some 500 shelters and orphanages that were developed through foreign aid organizations in the South. Many overflowed onto streets to scavenge and beg for their survival. The situation in North Korea, one can assume, must have been even worse because of the greater number of casualties, devastating destruction, and limited foreign aid. While being a welfare state in theory, the poverty-stricken North was not in a position to provide much for the survival needs of the numerous orphaned children.
For the most part, Koreaâs traditional family system was no longer functional. Its structure was so weakened that families were isolated and fractured, many headed by women. Unemployment and poverty were rampant. The Korean War resulted in many families with children becoming helpless victims of dependency and disintegration.
THE ORIGIN OF KOREAN INTERNATIONAL ADOPTION
The misery of the aftermath of Korean War brought great sympathy and support to the South from the international community, especially from many U.S. charity organizations such as Save the Childrenâs Fund, World Vision, Compassion, Church World Services, and Catholic Charities. In 1955 Harry Holt traveled to South Korea from Oregon to adopt orphaned children. The Seed from the East chronicles the Holtsâ personal account of adopting eight Korean GI orphans, their adjustment to their new home, and other inspiring stories about the origins of the project that developed into the worldâs largest international adoption program (Holt, 1956; Holt International Childrenâs Services, 1976). These pioneering adoptions were widely publicized and inspired many U.S. families to adopt Korean children in ever-increasing numbers. In 1961, the Korean government promulgated a special law, Extraordinary Law of Adoption for the Orphan Child, in order to encourage foreigners to adopt Korean children. According to a government report, the number of international adoptions had been growing each year, with the placement of increasingly more full-Korean children (74.2 percent). From 1955 to 1973, Korea sent 21,890 children overseas for adoption (Ministry of Health and Social Affairs, 1974).
Of course, the initial and primary receiving country of Korean children has been the United States for the past fifty years. However, international adoption was virtually unknown to the United States before World War II. In 1948 the U.S. Government enacted the Displaced Persons Act to help war orphans (up to 3,000) get settled in, with or without adoption. Immediately following the war, 500 Korean orphans were allowed to enter the United States every year for adoption. However, due to the great need for homes for Korean War orphans, the Refugee Relief Act allowed 4,000 orphans to the United States for adoption until 1956. The following year the cap on orphan visas was removed by Congress, and immigration for the purpose of adoption was ânormalizedâ with the Immigration and Nationality Act in 1961, which became a de facto legal tool of international adoption (Babb, 1999).
The continued pressure for the international adoption of Korean children was also matched by powerful advocacy activities of adoptive and prospective adoptive parents in the United States. In 1967 an adoptive mother, Betty Kramer, founded Parents of Korean and Korean-American Children. The following year the name was changed to the Organization for a United Response (OURS), becoming the largest international adoption support group in the country (Kramer, 1975). With continued evolution and restructuring, OURS later became Adoptive Families of America (AFA). The organizationâs award-winning national adoption magazine, Adoptive Families, has been the leading adoption information source in print and online for families before, during, and after adoption (AFA, 2005). Through their support and advocacy, Korean, Vietnamese, and other foreign children continued to be adopted in the United States throughout the post-Vietnam era. However, Korea remained the leading source for international adoption until 1995. During the first forty years following the Korean War, more children were brought into the United States from Korea than from all other countries combined. Not until the opening of Eastern Europe and China for adoption in the 1990s did the picture of international adoption change. In 1997 Adoptive Families reported that Russian and Chinese children were adopted more than children from all other countries combined. Thus, what was originally started as a critical rescue mission in Korea has now become a permanent institution of child welfare services on an international level.
INTERNATIONAL ADOPTION AS A PERMANENT INSTITUTION
As indicated in the preceding text, the âtemporaryâ practice of Korean international adoption continued and grew as time went by. In spite of some enhanced measures of security and stability in South Korea in the 1960s, and improving economic conditions in the 1970s, Koreaâs international adoptions continued and flourished. Most biracial children born to Korean women and American servicemen were ostracized in the âpure bloodâ monoethnic society. Consequently, out of necessity and moral mandate, they were prime candidates for foreign adoption. In the 1980s and 1990s, South Korea experienced dramatic economic growth and development, along with intermittent political turmoil and social unrest. Hundreds of thousands of poor women were oppressed and exploited with little provision for building a future. The rapid social change in turn increasingly disintegrated family and community functions, resulting in many illegitimate and abandoned children.
These children were mostly left in institutional care and not considered adoptable domestically. This was largely due to the cultural bias against non-relative open adoptions and also public reluctance, or inability, to develop and invest in its own social service resources. Thus, ever more nonwar orphans were sent away for international adoption. Those considered hard to place, such as older, handicapped, or âproblemâ children, were placed overseas with families who were eager and ready to provide adoptive homes.
Table 1.1 shows comprehensive statistics of Korean overseas adoption since the war until 2004. There have been some noticeable fluctuations in the number of adoptions in the past fifty years, significantly reflecting the Korean government policy on international adoption (GAIPS, 2005).
According to Table 1.1, the number of adoptions has steadily grown, with some interludes or downward trends. In 1976, in the face of increasing criticism and uneasiness about the âchild export business,â a new law was created by the military government of Korea which was intended to promote in-country adoption by restricting overseas adoption by 20 percent each year (Extraordinary Law, 1976). There was some decline the four or five years that followed, but due to mounting pressure from all quartersâincluding adoption agencies in the United Statesâthe law was eventually rescinded and the growth trend resumed until it reached a peak in 1985. Starting in 1990, however, the number was significantly reduced and stabilized with approximately 2,000 children being adopted overseas per year. In Korea, this decrease seemed to reflect a combined effect of public sentiment, comparatively increased in-country adoption, greater social and familial stability, and an increased supply of children from other countries in the international adoption market.
TABLE 1.1. Korean Overseas Adoption by Year
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