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May 11, 2006
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▶ On
Tuesday, parents and their adopted children at an outing at the Eastern
Child Welfare Center in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi province. Acknowledging children as adop=
ted is
still uncommon, but becoming more acceptable as the Confucian emphasis =
on
“blood ties” wanes somewhat. By Kim Tae-seong
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Five-year-old Woo-jin, like a ty=
pical
child his age, was busy showing off dinosaur pictures and home-made 3-D
glasses to his mother, Lee In-sook, when he
returned to his home in Hwagok, Seoul, from a=
day
care center.
Ms. Lee, 44, smiled at her child and his boasting. “My teacher gave=
me
three ‘good behavior stickers’ today,” he announced
proudly. Woo-jin has been the apple of Ms.
Lee’s eye since she met him in 2002 when he was a 2-month-old baby.=
Ms.
Lee and her husband instantly fell in love with him and adopted him as the
youngest brother of their son and daughter.
“My family could not let him go,” she said.
Not every Korean, however, is as brave as Ms. Lee in fighting against the
traditional concept of blood relations, and that prejudice partly explains
why about 2,000 Korean children are adopted by foreign couples every year=
.
In a bid to promote domestic adoption, the first Adoption Day, a
commemorative day designated by the National Assembly last year, is being
celebrated today. The designated day also falls near the longer-standing
Children’s Day on May 5 and last Monday’s Parents’ Day.=
Data from the Health Ministry say that overall adoptions are actually
decreasing, from 4,069 in 1990 to 3,562 last year. Only about 40 percent =
of
children given up for adoptions find new homes here, and that figure has =
been
relatively steady since the turn of the century. But something is changin=
g:
according to Holt Children’s Services, a child<=
/span>
welfare and adoption agency, the number of families who openly declare th=
at
their new child is adopted, rather than going through a pretend pregnancy=
for
the benefit of their friends and relatives, has increased from only about=
17
percent in 1998 to nearly 43 percent last year.
Ms. Lee chose to be open with her friends after some hesitation. “E=
ven
so, we considered moving so that our neighbors would not know that Woo-jin was adopted,” she said. In April, she
continued, Woo-jin started asking about how h=
e was
born and it was difficult for her to reveal the truth. =
“After receiving your phone calls for an interview, I finally told =
him
about his adoption,” Ms. Lee told the JoongAng=
Daily. “I was hurt when he asked, ‘Then, =
are
you my stepmother?’ but I explained the details and I showed him his
baby pictures, and he seems to understand. The last thing I wanted was for
him to be hurt by accidentally learning about the fact. Now I am very
relieved,” she continued.
Choi Eun-ha, 33, =
of Goyang in Gyeonggi prov=
ince,
tried in vitro fertilization after she failed to conceive during eight ye=
ars
of marriage. The procedures caused her both mental and physical distress,=
and
she finally decided to adopt a child.
“Our daughter Yoo-jeong was the first b=
aby
that the agency introduced us to. We thought of it not as us choosing the
baby, but the baby choosing us.”
More than 70 percent of Korean adoptive families are unable to have their=
own
babies, according to data from Holt Children’s Services. When famil=
ies
want to keep the adoption secret, said Lee Hyun-ju
at Holt, parents are likely to ask the agency for a baby with a specific
blood type, birth date, gender or parental education.
That’s not an issue for Ms. Choi, who l=
aughed
and said, “My husband and I often forget that =
Yoo-jeong
was adopted, and say that she resembles us.” She continued, “I
just want other couples who can’t conceive to know that there is
another way. I feel so sorry for overseas adoptees who realize they are
adopted at every moment because of their ‘foreign’
appearance.”
A 47-year-old mother of three children, Ms. Lee, asked that her first name
not be used when she talked about her experience. She put her youngest
daughter, Kyung-suh, up for adoption when she=
fled
from an abusive marriage in 1994. Her baby was born at Aeranwon,
a shelter for single mothers.
“I was so devastated at that time,” she sobbed. “If I h=
ad
not sent her away, I would have died with her.” Kyung-suh, Ms. Lee said, was returned to an agency by her=
first
adoptive parents because of the baby’s poor health. She was welcome=
d by
another American family with two other adopted Korean children. Ms. Lee
proudly showed a letter she had received from her daughter that began
“Dear Birth Mother,” and ended, “P.S.: You know I love =
you
more than the Milky Way.”
Ms. Lee, who herself had been raised by adoptive parents, said, “Wh=
en I
was a child, my step-parents liked my brother more because he was a boy,
although he was also adopted. I think overseas adoption is better for
children because they can be better fed and loved.”
About 80 percent of birth mothers here who give up their children are sin=
gle
mothers, and just over a third of them are less than 20 years old,
Holt’s data for 2005 show.
At Aeranwon, a 22-year-old mother who asked t=
o be
referred to only as Ms. Kim, has been staying =
since
October with her 4-month-old daughter Ji-in. =
She learned she was pregnant, she said, only six months into her term. The
father of the baby, a former boyfriend, pressed her to have an abortion. =
“So I came here to give birth to her,” Ms. Kim said, “a=
nd
then put her up for adoption. But I could not stop thinking about her, and
she even appeared in my dreams. Finally after a month, I decided to take =
her
back,” the young mother said with tear-filled eyes.
About 70 percent of single mothers in Aeranwon give
up their children for adoption, according to Han Sang-soon, the president=
of
the facility.
“It is hard to say what is right for a mother and child,” Ms.=
Han
said. “Taking individual situations, family and other matters into
account, the right choice can differ in each case.”
Ms. Kim said she wanted to work as a skin therapist after taking a traini=
ng
course. She plans to move to a “mother and child home” where =
she
can live for a year and a half; Aeranwon shel=
ters
only women with babies up to 100 days old. Her mother, she said, was the =
only
family member who knew she had had a child. “Of course I am scared,=
but
I will never regret my choice,” Ms. Kim said. “I will share my
difficulties and happiness with my daughter as friends. If I had abandoned
her, I could not be a good mother to any other child.”
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▶ At=
Holt
Children’s Services yesterday in Seoul, volunteer workers cared f=
or
babies awaiting adoption. [YONHAP]
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Alarmed at the nation’s low birth rate even before this
week’s announcement of a further decline last year, the government =
has
raised the amount of financial support for adoptive families and has chan=
ged
laws to give more benefits to single-parent families. The Mission
to Promote Adoption in Korea,
a social organization to promote domestic adoption, says adoptees can rec=
eive
free national medical insurance and tuition-free education at middle and =
high
schools.
Adoptive parents of handicapped children, who accounted for only about 2
percent of adoptions last year, can get a government stipend of 525,000 w=
on
($560) per month and medical fee refunds of up to 2.4 million won a year.=
Some local governments have gone further. The city government of Gwacheon, a Seoul suburb, offers 200,000 won per mo=
nth
for up to three years to adoptive families and a one-time payment of 1
million won to cover adoption costs, which can range from 600,000 won to =
over
2 million won. The Incheon city government an=
d the North Jeolla provinci=
al
government also offer monthly subsidies to parents of adopted children.
“We hope the government will give financial support to adoptees dur=
ing
their early years, but the more important support is to educate all stude=
nts
at elementary, middle and high schools to understand adoption and not to =
have
a biased perception of their adopted friends,” said Jeon
Soo-gul, an official at the adoption mission.
“There are about 6,000 orphans nationwide, and they should be raise=
d by
loving families, whether in our country or in other countries.”
A law on the welfare of single-mother families was changed last year to
include benefits for fathers raising children alone. Chang Hyun-joo, a social worker at the Mother and Child Home, =
said
mothers can receive about 400,000 won per month if they are registered wi=
th
the national basic livelihood protection program.
“But if the mother gets a job paying more than 1 million won per mo=
nth,
the family is no longer eligible for the subsidies. I think it is necessa=
ry
to support these families at least until the child reaches the age of 5 y=
ears
or so.”
“I hope that people will not treat me differently because I am a si=
ngle
mother when I apply for a job or am working at a company. I do think that
raising a child alone is one of the abilities that I have,” said Ms.
Lee, 30, the single mother of a month-old daughter.
Foreign adoptions began in the 1950s, when many war orphans here were pla=
ced
in families abroad by international agencies. Since then, more than 157,0=
00
Korean children have been sent to foreign countries ― over 100,000 =
to
the United States al=
one,
but also to France, =
Sweden, =
Denmark and other European
countries. Many of them have returned to =
Korea sometime later for vi=
sits,
to learn the language and culture or to stay. Some have organized support
groups here.
“When I first came to Gimpo =
Airport
in 1990, I remembered the smell of garlic. That felt so good,” said=
Dae-won Wenger, now 40, the secretary-general of the
Global Overseas Adoptees’ Link. He and his brother were adopted by a
Swiss family when he was five years old.
Mr. Wenger insisted on speaking in Korean ― imperfect but fluent. He
added, “Overseas adoptions should be the last resort. Korea=
is
economically developed. Society should accept single mothers and support =
them
so they do not have to give up their children and live in deep pain.̶=
1;
Andrea Cavicchi, 22, is concerned foremost wi=
th
finding her birth father. Last year, she flew here from Boston, Massachusetts,
after graduating from college and started searching for her birth mother
through an adoption agency. She discovered that her mother had died. R=
20;I
just want answers to my unanswered questions,” Ms. Cavicchi
said.
She sounded somewhat ambivalent about her childhood, although she said she
had been happy overall. She said there was a bit of tension with her
step-parents right now because of their fears that she would stay in Korea=
for a
long time. She said she wanted to spend more time here learning the langu=
age
and the culture.
“I do wish that adoption agencies would place Korean children with
Korean families,” she said. “In cases of overseas adoptions, =
it
would be better for the children to be adopted by Asian-American or
Korean-American families.” Her step-parents, although supportive, d=
idn’t
really understand her pain, she said. “I wish the Korean government=
had
more welfare programs like day care centers just to encourage single moth=
ers,
and to tell them it is OK to be a single mother.”
by Kim Soe-jung
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