Archive


Name	ASK

Subject	For International Adoption 199908

For International Adoption by Tobias Hubinette & Anna Hubinette

- This material was presented at G.O.A.L's Conference, August, 1999

1. Presentation

My Swedish name is Tobias Hubinette, and my Korean name is Lee Sam-dol. I was found on a train between Seoul and Yosu somewhere around Chonju on the 22nd of September 1971. I was named Chonju-Lee, and my birth date was set as the 12th of August 1971.

I was adopted to Sweden at seven months age and grew up in a small industrial town called Motala in the mid-south of Sweden. My mother was a pre-school teacher at a kindergarten and my father a welder at a workshop. I have a three years younger sister also adopted from Korea, born in South Cholla. When I was seven years old my parents divorced, and I grew up together with my mother and sister. Today my father has a new wife and my mother a new husband.

I studied classical languages at college, and I have a bachelor´s degree in Irish Gaelic at Uppsala university. This coming term I will take a bachelor´s degree in Korean at Stockholm university.

I am working as a media researcher and I am the editor of Um & Yang, magazine for the adopted Korean association in Sweden.

My Swedish name is Anna Hubinette, and my Korean name is Kim Son-kyong. One day old I was found outside a police station in Shinch´on, Seoul, the 1st of March 1973. Six months later I was adopted to Sweden, and grew up in a medium-sized town called Boras. My father is a station-master and my mother is a sister in charge. I have a four years younger brother also adopted from Korea and born in Taegu.

I studied natural science at college, and took an exam as a trained nurse. I am now a medical student at Caroline Institute of Stockholm, and I am working on my PhD. The focus of my dissertation is hormonal causes of breast cancer. I am also working as a nurse at hospitals in Stockholm.

2. Identity

We are against international adoption, not adoption itself. We consider international adoption as an unequal exchange. The Western world is taking children from the Non-Western world, and that is nothing else but racism and a continuation of colonialism. Being an adopted Korean in the Western world is always a question of being inferior and foreign in relation to the white majority.

The Western world has a prejudiced and disrespectful view of Asian people, and that affects adopted Koreans heavily living in the heart of the white culture. These prejudices exist both inside the adoptive family and in the society. Racism against Asian people is marginalization and ridicularization.

The international adoption process is parent-oriented, and the adoptive parents´ needs and wishes are satisfied. The adoptive parents have the right to choose between country, colour, age and sex. In the near future laws will be passed in many Western countries to make adoption possible for homosexual parents. In a global view the child giving countries like Korea are being used, and the adopted children are victims of an irresponsible social experiment of gigantic measures.

The adoptive parents think about us as their biological children, and there is a strong demand to become white. They take away our Korean names, our Korean language and our Korean soul. Because of the adoptive parents neglect of our Korean origin, we are unprepared to meet a racially hierarchic society. The impossible situation creates strong feelings of anger, hate, bitterness and frustration. There is a feeling of powerlessness, that someone has fooled us stolen our lives.

In Europe exotism is still the dominant way of meeting other cultures. Korean adoptees are treated like pets, not like Koreans. There is no understanding or respect for a Korean identity. Europe is a completely white world. Adoptive parents have no knowledge of or interest in Korea. They want their adoptive children to be white. Korean adoptees in Europe have an identity as adoptees, not as Koreans.

Europe is a conservative and hierarchic society. White hegemony and biological racism permeates the culture. Europe is also the home of national socialism and political racism. Today dynamic racist parties in Europe receive millions of votes and have representatives in most parliaments. The parties want to stop international adoption, and look upon adoptees as a threat. Adoptees have been brought up to think of themselves as whites, so it is most likely that an adoptee will marry a white man or woman. That means race mixing, and these parties present a solution: sterilization.

A small Korean immigrant community reduces Korea to a strange and distant country. Most Europeans including the majority of adoptive parents know nothing about Korea. We are marginalized and left alone among the white majority without any models.

It is important to know that a just small minority of the 150 000 Korean adoptees living in the Western world are interested in Korea. We are mental prisoners of our adoptive parents´ expectations. The absolute majority of the adoptive parents are infertile. So we have to replace the biological child they never could get. There is a strong demand to feel grateful, pleased and happy. Those impossible demands create so many bad life stories among Korean adoptees: psychosomatic or mental illness, drug abuse and criminality, prostitution, anorexia and unhealthy physical culture or even suicide.

But some Korean adoptees organize themselves in associations together with others, study Korean, meet Korean immigrants and return to Korea and search for their adoptive parents. We have noticed that this small minority often has some things in common: their parents are supportive and understanding or the parents have divorced and there is a limited contact between the adoptive parents and the child.

We think it is necessary for every adopted Korean to return to Korea. It is impossible to deny the Korean origin without developing a lifelong deception. For an adopted Korean, it is a way of becoming an adult, to separate from the parents.

Once we visit to Korea, it is impossible to return to the Western world as the same person. A cruel but realistic insight becomes evident: to be a Korean adoptee is to be an outsider both in Korea and in the Western world. We are excluded from both cultures and there is no home for us.

We are strongly aware of being products of a sad Korean history: colonization and occupation, division and civil war. We are a part of the Korean diaspora. This knowledge helps us to understand our destiny and our identity as Koreans.

We met each other at a meeting of the Korean adopted association in Stockholm the autumn of 1996. We engaged in 1997, married the same year in Korea and in Sweden in 1998. We feel that the most equal relationship for a Korean adoptee is together with another Korean adoptee.

In the future, when we grow older, we want to return to Korea and spend our last years in our mother country. We were born in Korea, and the life circle has to be closed.

3. Search

We think every adopted Korean should at least try to search for their Korean parents. It is not a good idea to leave such an important question unanswered for the rest of the life. Without trying, the questions tend to create strange feelings of unreality.

As foundlings we have no names of our Korean parents. I started my search in 1996 through Adoption Centre, the Swedish adoption agency, and Social Welfare Society, the Korean adoption agency, but with no results. I visited Korea for the first time in 1996 as a participator of the World Korean Youth Festival. During the festival I was interviewed by Korean television and searched for my parents, but again with no results.

In 1997 we visited Korea together, and on the 13th of July our Korean friends in Koyang city arranged a traditional wedding for us. They helped us to contact journalists, and we were interviewed both by newspapers, magazines and television channels and searched for our Korean parents. We believe that if our Korean parents are alive today, they must have seen us on television or in the newspapers. Some people actually contacted the journalists, but they seemed to be the wrong persons. We are deeply grateful for all the help our Korean friends in Koyang city gave us. In the end we did not find our parents, and everything ended in a ”closed case”. But we are convinced that our Korean parents now know that we are alive and that we are doing well together.

We know that fate has a strong position in the Korean culture. We are also Koreans, and we feel that if we had stayed in Korea, nevertheless we would have met each other in some way. We do not think that we did something bad in a former life, so we were adopted because of that. Instead maybe it was impossible for us to live together that former life, and adoption to Sweden was the only solution for us to meet each other again.

DATE: 2007.07.23 - 10:30

Babies for Sale 198801

SYMPOSIUM: INTERNATIONAL ADOPTION AND CULTURAL TRANSFORMATION: INTERNA...