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In search of virtue and virginity
‘Purity rings attract the wrong kind of attention. The best way to show you want to be sexually pure is simply to be sexually pure.’
October 03, 2007

Illustration by Bae Min-ho
If you are a virgin, you are not cool. At least, that is what the American teen film industry would like you to think.
In the 1995 movie “Clueless,” one character scornfully dismisses another by saying, “Why should I listen to you anyway? You’re a virgin who can’t drive.”

Adoption reform in South Korea as though children mattered
Adoptees and unwed mothers work with DP lawmakers to author a parallel bill intended to ensure a responsible legislative-reform process
By Kimberly Campbell
The Hankyoreh (English edition)
기사등록 : 2009-11-16 오후 01:23:31
기사수정 : 2009-11-16 오후 01:25:59
Democratic Party (DP) Lawmaker Choi Young-hee is sponsoring a bill to amend the Special Act Relating to the Promotion and Procedure of Adoption that has been co-authored by a coalition of adoptees and public interest groups and recently submitted to the National Assembly. Efforts by this coalition comprised of the Truth and Reconciliation for the Adoption Community of Korea (TRACK), the Adoptee Solidarity Network (ASK), KoRoot, Gong-gam, a Korean public interest lawyers’ group, and Miss Mamma Mia, the nation’s first single and unwed mothers’ organization, have been gaining the attention of press in country’s responsible for South Korea’s intercountry adoption placements, including the U.S. via the New York Times. The coalition held a public hearing on Nov. 10 at the National Assembly on their bill for adoption law reform that some anticipate would be presented for deliberation and a vote in the spring 2010 plenary session.

A fight to change adoption law
By Shannon Heit
The Korea Herald 2009.11.13
Leveraging the help of a group of lawyers and a Korean unwed mothers organization, a group of expats in Seoul are driving a movement to create a major shift in how the country deals with adoptions.
With the support of Democratic Party Representative Choi Young-hee, this coalition presented its bill to revise the current Special Act Relating to Adoption Promotion and Procedure law at a National Assembly public hearing on Nov. 10.
The coalition has been working together for over a year to draw up a proposal for a new adoption law. Involved are three adoption-related groups - Truth and Reconciliation for the Adoptee Community of Korea (TRACK), Adoptee Solidarity Korea, KoRoot - an unwed mothers group, Miss Mama Mia, and the Gonggam Public Interest Lawyers Group.
What initially began last year as a request to the Anti-corruption and Civil Rights Commission for a probe into cases of allegedly inaccurate or falsified adoption records has expanded into a movement that could change the course of Koreas adoption program.

Adopted From Korea and in Search of Identity
By RON NIXON
The New York Times
November 8, 2009
*See below for a link to the related study done by the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute*
As a child, Kim Eun Mi Young hated being different.
When her father brought home toys, a record and a picture book on South Korea, the country from which she was adopted in 1961, she ignored them.

“백인이 되고 싶었다” 한국계 미 입양아 성장기 정체성 혼란
구정은기자 ttalgi21@kyunghyang.com
경향신문
입력 : 2009-11-10 18:08:04ㅣ수정 :
미 국 내 해외 입양아들 가운데 큰 비중을 차지하는 한국계 입양아 대부분이 성장기에 정체성 혼란을 느끼는 것으로 조사됐다. 뉴욕타임스는 9일 입양아들이 유년기와 청소년기에 정체성 혼란을 느끼고 있는 것으로 나타났다는 조사 결과와 함께 한인 입양아들의 고민과 아픔을 전하는 기사를 실었다.
플로리다주 포트로더데일에서 고교 교사로 일하는 한국계 입양아 출신 조엘 밸런타인(35)은 3살 때인 1977년 백인 가정에 입양됐다. 백인들 속에서 자라난 그는 “인종적 정체성의 고민을 얘기하고 싶어도 자칫 양부모의 고마움을 모르는 것으로 비칠까봐 말할 수가 없었다”고 털어놨다.
한국전쟁 직후부터 2007년까지 미국으로 입양된 한국계는 16만명으로 미국 내 전체 한인 인구의 10%를 차지한다. 입양아들은 백인들에게 둘러싸여 있는 경우가 대부분이어서 인종적 혼란을 더욱 크게 느낀다. 61년 미국에 입양된 김은미 영(46)이라는 여성은 “어릴 때 양아버지가 한국과 관련된 선물을 사주면 모두 무시했고, 청소년기에도 백인 남자아이들만 사귀었다”면서 “서른이 넘어 나의 정체성을 깨닫고 생모에 대한 생각을 하게 되면서 큰 혼란을 겪었다”고 말했다.

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.

Unwed mothers need aid
Editorial from the JoongAng (한국어 밑에 있습니다)
November 14, 2009
The New York Times earlier this week carried a feature on the conflicts and struggles adoptees from South Korea endure while growing up in American families in a study of trans-racial adoptions. The study on first-generation children adopted from South Korea showed most have suffered an identity crisis either from racial discrimination or coming to terms with their ethnic origin. In fact, 78 percent had considered themselves to be white or had wanted to be white when they were children.
Some 163,000 children from South Korea have found adopted parents in other countries, mostly in the United States, between 1953 and last year. Ethnic South Koreans make up the largest group of trans-racial adoptees in the U.S.
The country has been trying to shake off the dishonor of being one of the largest “exporters of orphans.” Yet abandoned babies are still carried off overseas in search of families that want them. Most of the babies put up for adoption come from single mothers. Of 1,250 children adopted by foreign families last year, 90 percent were born to single women. Children continue to be put up for adoption because our society does not approve of unmarried women raising a child on their own. The same paper last month pointed out that most single women give up babies because Korean society eyes them almost like criminals. Adoptees and their adoptive parents instead of the Korean government launched a campaign in Korea to help single mothers keep their children.
It is a shame Asia’s third largest economy and a member of the G-20 still depends on others to help out an underprivileged group of its people.

Mother Jones
November/December 2007 Issue
Did I Steal My Daughter? The Tribulations of Global Adoption
The answers are never easy when you enter the labrynth of global adoption.
By Elizabeth Larsen
I FIRST MET MY DAUGHTER in the lobby of the Westin Camino Real, the grandest hotel in Guatemala City. The night before, my husband Walter and I had soothed our nerves running on the treadmills in the fitness center, where a polite attendant handed us plush white towels and spritzed the equipment with a flowery disinfectant. Afterward I wrote a series of letters to our daughter. Because children adopted from overseas usually have little information about their history, parents are advised to document the trip as best they can, creating what is known as an "adoption story."
Reading the journal now, more than two years later, it feels so self-conscious. "We've been waiting so long to meet you—almost seven months!" the first entry reads. "Ever since you were seven days old and the agency emailed us your beautiful photos, we've wondered what you will be like. We fell in love with you that minute!" Gone is any sense of the surreal. Walter and I already had two biological sons; now we were jetting into a Third World country with the sole aim of leaving with one of its daughters. (Wanting a girl, we'd opted for the sure bet that adoption offers.) I mentioned, but didn't dwell on, the brutal poverty outside our hotel windows, focusing instead on how my sons were looking forward to meeting their little sister.

한인입양아 “백인이고 싶었다”
NYT “美 1세대 입양아 78% 인종정체성 혼란”
뉴시스 suwon@suwon.com
2009년 11월 11일 (수)
뉴욕타임스는 입양 후 인종적 정체성의 혼란을 느끼는 사례에 관한 보고서가 9일 공개됐다면서 한국 출신의 1세대 입양아 중 78%가 그들을 백인으로 인식하거나 어렸을 때 백인이기를 바랬던 것으로 나타났다고 전했다.
60%는 중학교에 들어간 후 자신의 인종적 정체성을 느끼게 됐다고 응답했고 61%는 성인이 돼 한국을 여행을 여행하며 모국의 문화를 체험하고 친부모를 찾는 노력을 기울였다고 말했다.
많 은 한국 입양아들은 대부분 백인 이웃들이 주변에 있는 환경에서 자랐다. 어렸을 때 인종적 차별을 당하고 드물게는 교사로부터 차별받는 일도 있었다. 또한 입양아 중 소수만이 한인들과 어울릴 때 환영받는 느낌을 가졌다고 답한 것으로 나타났다.

Mother Jones
March/April 2009
Meet the Parents: The Dark Side of Overseas Adoption
Listen to an interview with the author.
http://www.motherjones.com/podcast/mojo-5-questions-international-adoption-scott-carney
After hours hunched behind the wheel of a rented Kia, flying past cornfields and small-town churches, I'm parked on a Midwestern street, trying not to look conspicuous. Across the way, a preteen boy dressed in silver athletic shorts and a football T-shirt plays with a stick in his front yard. My heart thumps painfully. I wonder if I'm ready to change his life forever.
I've been preparing for this moment for months in the South Indian metropolis of Chennai, talking to khaki-clad officers in dusty police stations and combing through endless stacks of court documents. The amassed evidence tells a heartrending tale of children kidnapped from Indian slums, sold to orphanages, and funneled into the global adoption stream. I've zeroed in on one case in particular, in which police insist they've tracked a specific stolen child in India to a specific address in the United States. Two days ago, the boy's parents asked me to deliver a message to the American family via their lawyer, seeking friendship and communication. But after traveling across 10 time zones to get here, I'm at a loss for how to proceed.