Archive

The Dong-A Ilbo
No Viable Solution to “Birthless Society”
JUNE 02, 2005 06:45
by Jin-KyeongKim TK Sohn (kjk9@donga.com sohn@donga.com)
Kim Ja-young (aged 31), the mother of an 18-month-old daughter, has a job. She doesn’t plan on having any more children, and her daughter is taken care of by her parents-in-law in Gwangju. They even tell her “We cannot baby-sit another one. Don’t ever think of having another one, even a son for us.”
Kim said, “It has been a while since I have seen my husband because we come home at different hours,” adding, “It would be too burdensome to have another baby because I love working. But most of all, babysitting is difficult to arrange and it is too costly to educate children in Korea.”
In Korea, the serious problem of women of childbearing age avoiding bearing children is arising. Childless or not, 50 percent of married women ages 30 to 34 answered, “I am not thinking of having children.” This means one child would do, just like in Kim’s case.

Information, Danish newspaper
Lørdag 24. maj 2008 (2008.5.24)
MED ANDRE ØJNE
Red en voksen, køb en spæd kineser
Den lave fertilitetsrate i de vestlige lande er i dag den primære grund til, at nogle vælger at adoptere. Det danske adoptionsselskab AC Børnehjælp kunne i virkeligheden lige så godt hedde AC Voksenhjælp, siger Maja Lee Langvad, der selv er adopteret - og i øvrigt lesbisk
22. maj 2008
Af: KRISTINA NYA GLAFFEY

Information, Danish newspaper
16. juni 2008
Af: MAJA LEE LANGVAD
ADOPTION
International adoptioner en industri
Forskellen på adoptionsbranchen og andre brancher er, at der i adoptionsbranchen handles med mennesker. Men i og med, at det er en industri, har adoptionsselskaberne også en interesse i at fokusere på de gode historier
Information bragte den 23. maj en kronik af Anders Christensen (formand for adoptionsselskabet AC Børnehjælp) (AC) og Gitte Cordes (næstformand for AC Børnehjælp) (GC), som er bekymrede over den stigende kriminalitet i international adoption. AC og GC tegner et forsimplet billede, og deres forklaringer er kun overfladiske. Man må grave et spadestik dybere for at forstå dynamikken i international adoption og dermed også den voksende kriminalitet.

JoongAng Daily
Trail of crumbs leads writer to Korea
June 02, 2008
Waiting for her mother for three days in an Incheon market, a 3-year-old girl felt a piercing hunger. Her mother’s promise to “come back soon” was never kept, and the little girl was taken to an orphanage in November 1973. Later, she was adopted to New Orleans, Louisiana in the United States, where her new parents gave her the name Kim.
Life after adoption for Kim Sunee was a world away from the hunger she experienced in the market, but that acute sense of hunger remained in her heart. This hunger, in both a mental and physical sense, become her life obsession. So it was no surprise for her to choose a profession involving food, as she wanted to “find a way back home through food.” Nowadays, Sunee, 37, is a noted food columnist and editor of the food section of the U.S. lifestyle magazine, Cottage Living.
Earlier this year, she published a memoir that includes recipes which she titled “Trail of Crumbs: Hunger, Love and the Search for Home.” She got the title from the Grimm fairy tale, “Hansel and Gretel,” about a brother and sister who drop pieces of bread to find their way back home after learning of their father and stepmother’s intention to forsake them.
Her book, featured in a full-page spread in the New York Times, was translated into her birth mother’s language this month. To celebrate the release of the Korean-language version of her book, published under the title, “Recipes of a 30-year-old,” Sunee visited Seoul with another important agenda ? to follow her own trail of crumbs.

JoongAng Daily
April 03,2009
Fostering families
[Changing attitudes to raising children]‘I always knew these children would leave someday, but the pain of separation was unimaginable.’
A constant runny nose plagued the baby boy, who looked like he’d never had a haircut. The social worker who had brought the 10-month-old child to the home of Yun Ik-sang, a 48-year-old pastor, said the problem was rhinitis.
The social worker handed the pastor a bag containing three diapers and a half-finished bottle of baby formula. She said the child’s mother had handed Yeong-su (not his real name) over to the foster care organization and would come back for him when her situation improved.
Yun and Lee greet their children after school. There are only 10 pupils in total at the village school.

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
2008.11.20
More babies adopted locally
The number of domestic adoptions exceeded the international adoption figure for the first time in Korea last year, according to data released by a research agency yesterday.
In a statistical report by the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs, the total number of children adopted locally increased from 1,332 in 2006 to 1,388 in 2007, while internationally adopted children decreased from 1,899 in 2006 to 1,264 last year.
In an overall view, the total number of adoptions is dropping but international adoption figures are falling at a faster pace, said Chang Young-sik, senior fellow at the statistics development team at the institute. This is partly because more people are now open to adoptions, a fact that was kept mum in the past.
This is an interesting finding due to the fact that, ever since 1953, foreign adoptions have been much more popular than domestic adoptions.

Digital Chosunilbo
2008.11.21
Celebrity Couple to Receive Philanthropy Award
Celebrity couple Cha In-pyo and Shin Ae-ra will be honored with the 20th Asan Special Award.
The Asan Foundation explained that the couple has contributed greatly to combating social prejudice by officially adopting two children, and devoting themselves to helping those in need by supporting 31 children across the world with continuous donations.
The couple said, "We never expected to receive the award, as there are so many people who are helping others in hidden places, but we are very delighted, because we can help more children with the prize."
They will be awarded a medal with 50 million won (US$1=W1,497) of prize money during a ceremony at Asan Education Institute in Seoul next Thursday.

Variety.com Posted: Sat., Oct. 6, 2007, 12:59pm PT
First US, Korean co-production in Seoul
'Hanji Box' is first project from Cost Program
By DARCY PAQUET
Actress Amy Irving is coming to Seoul to star alongside Baek Yoon-shik ("The President's Last Bang") and Kim Yoon-jin (ABC's "Lost") in "Hanji Box," the first U.S.-Korean co-production to shoot on Korean soil.
The independent feature by Vermont-based filmmaker Nora Jacobson ("Nothing Like Dreaming") is inspired by a true story about an American woman who travels to Seoul in hopes of better understanding her estranged daughter, a Korean adoptee.
While there, she becomes taken with the work of a Korean painter (Baek), and eventually meets and falls in love with him.

JoongAng Daily
Expat volunteers work on their Seoul
June 11, 2008
Rachael Fox, a 26-year-old English teacher, got a phone call from a friend three months ago, who said that Fox may be interested in Volunteer for PLUR (Peace, Love, Unity, Respect), an online-based expat volunteer group in Korea.
Fox immediately checked out its Web site (www.idealist.org/en/org/169631-40) and discovered the group is doing the same volunteer work she used to do at home in Canada ? feeding the homeless.
She has attended every volunteer event available since, Fox said.
“I like doing it,” she said, after finishing distributing meal trays to hundreds of homeless people at the Resurrection Center near the Sookmyung Women’s University subway station in Seoul last Friday.