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The Korea Times
10.30.2009
By Lee Tae-hoon
Staff Reporter
The government plans to permit dual citizenship to Koreans who have acquired another nationality, as well as foreigners who have married a Korean or lived here for five years, a senior Justice Ministry official said.
Korea has scrapped its original plan to offer dual citizenship only to Korean adoptees and foreigners with outstanding talents, said Cha Gyu-geun, head of the ministry's Nationality and Refugee Division.
The ministry has nearly completed the new bill which would overhaul the Naturalization Law, Cha said.

www.cbs.co.kr
2009.10.23
사람에서 희망찾기' 절절 인터뷰③ - '뿌리의 집' 김도현 목사
"처음에 나는 이 일이 매우 낯설고 잘 모르는 일일 뿐더러, 왠지 어두운 그림자가 드리워
진 세상 같아 선뜻 발을 들여놓기가 싫었습니다"
20년 가까이 입양인 곁에서 그들과 함께 호흡하며, 이들 각각의 '존재찾기의 여정'이 그저 막막하고 외롭지 않도록 도와온 김도현 목사에게, 왜 현재의 삶을 택했나 물었을 때 돌아온 예상 밖의 답이었다.
테마가 있는 뉴스

www.abc.net
Broadcast: 15/09/2009
Reporter: Andrew Georghegan
Since Angelina Jolie adopted her daughter Zahara in 2005, the number of Americans adopting Ethiopian children has quadrupled.
A pop-media obsession with celebrities adopting children in Africa has resulted in a queue of adopting foreigners dealing with opportunistic adoption agents in operating in a regulatory vaccuum. In Ethiopia - and beyond - its creating a heartbreaking mess.
International adoptions may seem like an ideal solution to the dreadful deprivation among the young in Ethiopia and the often impossible circumstances confronting parents trying to feed and raise their children.
The reality though, is far from ideal.

The New York Times International Edition
By CHOE SANG-HUN
Published: October 7, 2009
SEOUL, South Korea —
Photo:
Four years ago, when she found that she was pregnant by her former boyfriend, Choi Hyong-sook considered abortion. But after she saw the little blip of her baby’s heartbeat on ultrasound images, she could not go through with it.
Jean Chung for the International Herald Tribune

Debut of a Korean-American Adoptee Director at the Pusan International Film Festival
Tammy Chu, Director
Resilience
Sunday, October 11 (1 PM) and Thursday, October 15 (4 PM)
(Seoul, Yonhap News) Korean-American adoptee Tammy Chu will premiere her latest film on international adoption at the Pusan International Film Festival later this week.
With a running time of 75 minutes, Resilience will screen first on Sunday, October 11 at 1 PM at the Haeundae Megabox Theater 3. The second screening will be on Thursday, October 15 at 4 PM at the same location. The film offers a unique perspective on the issues related to international adoption.
Born in Seoul, Chu and her twin sister were adopted to America at the age of 8. When she was 21, she met her birth mother in Korea. This was an experience that ultimately contributed to the shaping of the film, which she began in earnest in 2001. The film has received generous support from the KoRoot Guesthouse for Adoptees in Korea.

美입양한인 감독作 부산국제영화제 첫선
  태미 추 감독 `회복의 길' 11일 상영
(서울=연합뉴스) 왕길환 기자 = 재미 입양한인 태미 추(34.여) 감독이 만든 입양인 관련 영화가 다음달 열리는 부산국제영화제에 첫선을 보인다.
   추 감독은 "해외 입양문제를 다룬 다큐멘터리 `회복의 길(Resilience)'이 오는 11일 오후 1시 해운대 메가박스 3관에서 첫 상영을 한다"며 "러닝타임 75분으로 15일 오후 4시에 2차 상영이 예정돼 있다"고 1일 밝혔다.
   서울에서 쌍둥이로 태어나 8세 때 함께 미국으로 입양된 추 감독은 21세 때 어머니를 만난 경험을 토대로 2001년부터 이번 영화를 제작해 왔다. 제작 지원은 입양인들의 쉼터인 `뿌리의 집'이 맡았다.
   영화는 어머니 명자 씨가 30여년 간 떨어져 있던 아들 브렌트(한국이름 성욱)와 재회하며 겪게 되는 남다른 여정을 보여준다. TV 방송을 통한 첫 상봉부터 그후 이어지는 만남과 헤어짐을 통해 이들은 가족의 배반과 입양이 남긴 것들을 딛고 하나의 관계를 만들려 한다.
   이 영화는 한국과 미국 그리고 세계 각지에 있는 수많은 어머니, 입양인들과 입양가족에 대한 이야기로, 제3자가 아닌 추 감독 개인의 실제 경험이 녹아 있어 관객들에게 감동을 더해 줄 것으로 기대된다.

The Korea Herald
2009.10.02
PIFF film 'Resilience' looks at often-ignored mothers of adoption
By Matthew Lamers and Shannon Heit
Behind the glamour of adoption, new beginnings and happy reunions, there is another, darker side of loss and separation for birth mothers, birth families, and adoptees that is often left out of the discussion.
Popular culture mostly fails to take up the issue from the perspective of the birth mother. What factors forced the decision to give up her child? Were there other options? How has she coped since?
Filmmaker Tammy Chu asks those questions, but also considers the feeling of separation from the side of the adoptee and the sometimes life-long journey to find identity and belonging.

한국일보 Hankook Ilbo
[김흥숙 칼럼/5월 13일]
나라가 사라지기 전에
김흥숙 시인・번역가

입양은 좋은 거라고만 생각했는데 지난 금요일, 하필이면 어버이날 열린 '국외입양인연대 (ASK)' 주최 세미나가 생각을 바꾸어 놓았습니다. 그날은 정부가 정한 '입양의 날'과 ASK가 계획했던 '입양 없는 날'을 사흘 앞둔 날이었습니다. 입양의 날은 2006년 제정되어 5월 11일에 기념식이 열립니다. '11'은 '1+1,' 즉 한 가족이 한 아이씩 입양하여 새로운 가족이 되자는 뜻을 담고 있다고 합니다.
입양보다 더 중요한 것

The Korea Times
05-22-2009 17:27
Days Without Adoption

By Kim Heung-sook
``It's yours," a Korean adoption agency official beamed as she handed a baby wrapped in white cloth to an American lady. Without saying a word, the latter received the baby carefully, revealing her love and welcome only through her gleaming eyes. From her tears brimming, I could tell that she had come through a lot of troubles to become a mother.
While I tried to feel happy for the little one, I couldn't resist a certain pang of sadness for some inexplicable reason. Was it because I didn't like the way the official called the baby? It is grammatically right to call a baby by the pronoun of ``it" when you don't know ``its" sex, but the word disturbed me somehow. When you are giving a book or anything away, you say ``It's yours," too, I momentarily thought.

The Korea Herald
May 18, 2008
Are adopted children invisible commoditi..

Madonnas efforts to adopt another child from Malawi fill the international press, and the familiar songs about the rights and wrongs of adoption are sung again. But what about Koreans adopted abroad, and adoption from elsewhere in East Asia?
In her book, Ten Thousand Sorrows, Elizabeth Kim tells how, in a Korean village in the 1950s, she and her mother were made to live in a separate hut, because she was fathered by an American solider. Because of this, she saw her mother being hanged by male relatives, and was sent to a fundamentalist Christian orphanage, which was more like a prison. Then she was adopted by a Calvinist pastor in America who would tape record her screams as he beat her. She was then married off to another pastor who jumped on her stomach when she was pregnant, put her in the dog kennel to sleep, and made her watch while he had sex with other women. Honor killings, abuse of girls and women, and forced marriages are not just horrors of the Muslim world.
One expert, Tobias Hubinette, traces international adoption from Korea back to 1860, when famine and poverty had caused children to be sent to Russia and Manchuria. He estimates that there were 148,394 overseas adoptions between 1953 and 2001. He believes that adoption is too often used to get rid of impure and costly children whether stigmatized by illegitimacy (sasaenga), by disability (changaea) or by race (honhyeola). Adoptees were seen by Park In-sun as an aspect of Korean economic development, as goodwill ambassadors or victims in a pursuit of greater national economic prosperity.