History – Learning to be 한국인

The international adoption of South Korean children started as a result of a large number of orphaned children, primarily of mixed race (American white or black fathers and Korean mothers), following the Korean War in 1953. Harry Holt is considered the father of South Korean international adoption after adopting 8 South Korean children and subsequently founding Holt International children’s Services in the mid-late 1950’s. Relatively few children were adopted from South Korea from 1953-1966 (around 6.3k). Over the following decades religious organizations in the United States, Australia, and Western European countries slowly developed the international adoption of South Korean children by primarily (98% white adoptive families) into a sustained program. To date, around 200,000 South Korean children have been adopted internationally with the peak decade from 1980-1989 with 66.5k children exported to adoptive families mostly in the United States. I was one of the KADs from the peak decade, arriving in the United States in April of 1987.

Beginning in the early 1990’s, the topic of “child exports” from South Korea gained visibility, especially within South Korea. This was due to a number of factors. One factor was the international attention that South Korea gained after hosting the 1988 Summer Olympics. South Korea felt that the issue of “child exports” was a source of national humiliation causing many South Korean politicians claiming that they would focus on stopping the practice. Another factor was that a number of early KADs, many having reached adulthood, were showing interest in visiting or living in South Korea. Often articles or publications talk about KADs visiting South Korea as primarily “tourists”. Please note that I find this assumption to be grossly over-simplified and typical of how non-KADs talk about, summarize, and report on the Korean adoption experience. More on this topic in a future blog post.

The importance of racial purity as well as patrilineal blood culture in South Korea is highly important and has arguably played a role in international South Korean adoption. Since the late 1980’s, many studies and articles have been posted regarding these aspects of South Korean culture. A 2007 submission by Sue-Je Lee Gage for the partial fulfillment of a PHD in the Department of Anthropology at Indiana University said that, in Korean patrilineal blood culture, Koreanness is passed from parent to child as long as the parents have “pure” Korean blood, and this transference of Koreanness is especially notable when the Korean father gives his “pure” Korean blood to his Korean child, making lineage along the father’s line especially important in the Korean concept of race and identity. Gage said that a Korean family’s lineage history represents the official recording of their blood purity. Due to this conception of identity along blood lines and race, Gage said that Koreans in South Korea consider Korean adoptees who return to South Korea to still be Korean even if they cannot speak Korean. Gage also said that Korean women who had sex with non-Korean men were often not considered to be “Korean” in the “full-fledged” sense by Koreans.

The topic of racial purity is talked about within the KAD community, but usually from the viewpoint of those whom are fully Korean (not that of mixed race or those physically appearing to not be 100% Korean). I believe this topic should be given more attention within the KAD community. Our focus tends to be on feelings or appearances of Korean-ness that potentially excludes a major portion of the KAD community… those whom are not fully ethnically Korean. I’ll likely touch on this in a future blog post, especially as it relates to K-beauty, K-pop, and the impact on KADs.

Sexism may play a factor in South Korean international adoption. A 2014 NPR article said that unwed mothers suffer a social stigma in South Korea, because having a child out of wedlock is an act that goes against Korean patrilineal bloodline culture. The 2014 article also said that Korean adoptees suffer a social stigma in South Korea, because Korean adoptees have been “cut loose from their bloodlines”. A 2015 news article said that there is still a strong social stigma against unwed mothers and illegitimate children in South Korea. The 2015 news article said that this social stigma applies to the unwed mother and even her illegitimate children and her whole extended family, causing a child who was born out of wedlock to suffer lowered marital, job and educational prospects in South Korea.

A controversial factor in the international adoption of South Korean children is money (please note that supporters of international adoption claim that adoption agencies are only caring for infants who would otherwise go homeless or be institutionalized). A 1988 article which was originally in The Progressive said that the South Korean government made fifteen to twenty million dollars per year by the adoption of Korean orphans by families in other countries. A 2011 article in the Institute for Policy Studies estimated each adoption cost US$15k, paid primarily by the adoptive parents. This generated an estimated US$35M/yr to cover foster-care, medical care, and other costs for the ~2,300 Korean international adoptions.

Related to the topic of money in the international adoption of South Korean children is the pressure put upon biological mothers to give up their children. In a 1988 article which was originally in The Progressive, a South Korean orphanage director said that according to his orphanage’s questionnaire data 90% of Korean birth mothers indicated that wanted to keep their biological child and not give it up for adoption, but the South Korean orphanage director said that only maybe 10% of birth mothers eventually decided to keep their biological child after his orphanage suggested to the birth mothers that unwed mothers and poor couples should give their child up for adoption. In the same 1988 article, an INS officer at the Embassy of the United States in Seoul said that social workers were hired by adoption agencies to perform the role of “heavies” to convince South Korean mothers to give their children up for adoption. Although the officer said that he felt that the adoption business was probably a good thing for birth mothers, adoptive parents and adoptees, he said that the adoption business troubled him due to the large number of children who were being adopted out of South Korea every month. The INS officer said that these numbers should make people question how much of the international adoption of South Korean children was a humanitarian cause and how much it was a business.

The topic of the rights and pressures put on South Korean biological mothers who choose to give up their children for international adoption is frequently commented on, with many personal accounts and anecdotes, in closed forums between KADs. I will talk more about this particular topic in a later blog post as it relates to my own adoption experience.

Adoption agencies and adoptive parents are widely considered the subject matter experts, often reflected in media, studies, and even adoption training and seminars. However, in the past 15 years or so, laws and practices surrounding South Korean adoption have slowly started to shift to include the experiences of the biological mothers and Korean adoptees. Some of these changes are due to the efforts of Korean adoptees returning to South Korea to promote visibility and to push for laws and practices with the hope of reducing or ending the practice of international adoption of South Korean children. One example would be the recent landmark case of KAD Kara Bos (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/world/asia/south-korea-adoption-Kara-Bos.html) in which it was found by a South Korean court that Kara, adopted nearly four decades ago, must be recognized as the daughter of an 85-year-old South Korean man. In addition to the efforts of adult KADs to gain recognition and find legal support, as noted in a 2015 article, the South Korean government is trying to have more domestic adoptions due, in part, to people around the world becoming aware of the large number of Korean adoptees who were adopted by families outside of South Korea since the mid 1950s. Because the South Korean government doesn’t want to have the reputation of a “baby-exporting country”, and due to the belief that Koreans should be raised with Korean culture, the South Korean government has been trying to increase domestic adoptions.

Regardless of the slow shift in effort to include KADs and biological mothers in the adoption conversation, social shame and stigma surrounding Korean adoption has impacted the success of changing laws and practices. The primary reason as of 2015 for the majority of surrenders within South Korea is single mothers are still publicly shamed within Korea, and the South Korean mothers who give their kids up for adoption have been mostly middle or working-class women since the 1990s. The amount of money single mothers can receive within the country is 70,000 won per month, only after proving poverty versus the tax break from adopting domestically is 150,000 won per month, which is unconditional, whereas it’s conditional in the case of single mothers. In a 2009 article, Stephen C. Morrison, a Korean adoptee, said that he wanted more Koreans to be willing to adopt Korean children. Morrison said that he felt the practice of Koreans adopting Korean children in secret was the greatest obstacle for Korean acceptance of domestic adoption. Morrison also said that in order for domestic Korean adoption to be accepted by Koreans he felt that Korean people’s attitudes must change, so that Koreans show respect for Korean adoptees, not speak of Korean adoptees as “exported items” and not refer to Korean adoptees using unpleasant expressions of which Morrison gave the example, “a thing picked up from under a bridge”. I will touch on this topic in a later blog post because it relates to my own adoption experience and my journey to find my birth family.

Regardless of ones feelings about the topic of international South Korean adoption, the institution continues. In 2019 there were just over 700 South Korean adoptions (about 300 internationally and 400 domestically). This is a drastic difference from the 66.5k KADs of the 1980s, like myself, adopted internationally.

This blog post ended up being a lot less “brief” than intended! The topic of international adoption of South Korean children is a complex one. It is important to understand the major factors involved to help contextualize where KADs, as well as adoptive families and biological families, are coming from. Although international South Korean adoption is relatively new, less than 70 years as a recognized institution, the topic has a very high impact on those involved… especially Korean adoptees. I am not an “expert” in terms of studying international South Korean adoption (although as a KAD as well as a University of Minnestoa SIBs study subject I feel that I have a high degree of experience on the subject). That said, if you have any questions about the history of South Korean adoption, please feel free to ask and I’ll do my best to answer (or to try to point you to a resource that can if available).

Thanks for reading.

사랑해요 (I love you)!

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