Archive

PRESS RELEASE August 8, 2004
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
FR: Adoptee Solidarity Korea (ASK) & Helping Adoptees Lead Together (HALT)
RE: An international network of Korean adoptees organizes to end international adoption
At the historic event of Korean adoptees gathering in Seoul, an international network of Korean adoptees supporting an end to international adoption is set to launch. Two organizations, Adoptee Solidarity Korea (ASK) based in Seoul, & Helping Adoptees Lead Together (HALT) from the United States, have been working collaboratively to establish an international network of Korean adoptees who believe that the Korean government can serve as a world leader in providing alternatives to intercountry adoption.
Adoption in South Korea did not exist as a formal legal process before 1950. However, since 1954 more than 150,000 Korean children, although some experts and researchers cite numbers as high as 200,000, have been adopted to North America, Western Europe and Oceania. During the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, a journalist reported that South Korea’s largest export was its babies. Currently South Korea has the 12th strongest economy in the world, but Korean children continue to be sent abroad while countries with weaker economies and higher birthrates, such as Romania, have ceased their international adoption programs. Many countries do not allow the adoption of their citizens, including Japan and Italy.
In response to this crisis, the South Korean government has reacted mostly to international criticism by developing shortsighted, weak short-term policies with the primary aim of temporarily scaling back the numbers of children sent abroad. South Korea does not have a social welfare system in place to provide adequate financial support to single parents & poor families, or to families who have a parent/caregiver with serious illnesses or injuries. Any support that is available is usually temporary. The South Korean government has been widely criticized because it spends more money on facilitating conditions that export Korean children than support the well-being of families struggling to stay together. Institutionalization, and a program called the Child Headed Family program (the eldest child is responsible for the family) serve as domestic solutions to its social welfare problems concerning abandoned children and poor families. However, South Korea has depended primarily on other countries via international adoption.

The Hankyoreh
[Column] Why does South Korea keep exporting babies?
By Jenny Na, South Korean adoptee
*한극어: 아래에있는글을 보세요*
Hundreds of adoptees are in Seoul this week for what is expected to be the largest gathering of South Korean adoptees in history, with over 700 adoptees from around the world predicted to attend the week-long event. The aim of the Gathering is to bring together the global community of South Korean adoptees, who represent diverse nationalities, languages and viewpoints. Some of the Gathering’s activities include an art exhibition, presentations and workshops by adoptees, a research conference and an Adoptee World Cup played by teams representing the countries of adoptees’ current residence. The people who sent us away never expected us to return but so we have and our numbers increase every year.
Because of the significance and size of such an event, it is inevitable that the South Korean government and media will both be present. I hope that these two entities will be responsible with their words and actions. However, given the government’s policy on intercountry adoption, or lack thereof, and past media depictions of adoptees as alternatively successful or childlike, it is hard not to be skeptical.
The opening ceremony on Wednesday will likely involve a government representative from the Ministry of Health and Welfare giving a welcome address. As we sit politely in our best clothes, the perfect pictures of the success that the South Korean media seem to want us to be, it is not impossible to imagine that the government representative will say “I’m sorry” and “I love you.” This seems to be the requisite speech to adoptees as it is given whenever we gather in such large numbers. But for whom are these words meant and what is it that prevents them from being just another series of empty words?