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The Korea Times
Expert Calls on Korea to Provide Legal Framework for Foster Care
By Soh Ji-young
Staff Reporter
Last month, a tragic incident was reported in Pusan where a couple abused two foster children they had taken in to pay off their credit card debts.
South Korea’s lack of legal systems for foster care and inadequate training systems for potential foster parents are the main reasons behind such tragedies, according to Chris Gardiner, president of the International Foster Care Organization (IFCO).
He came to Seoul on Jan. 31 on the invitation of the Korean Foster Care Association, one of the IFCO’s member organizations, to assess the foster care system here.

152 male lawmakers push to scrap 'hoju'
Prospects for abolishing by the year's end the controversial "hoju" system, barring women from heading a family, received a big boost yesterday from a majority of male lawmakers of the National Assembly.
"We will strive by all means to abolish the hoju system before the end of this year. The evil system has been trespassing on women's rights for centuries," Rep. Lee Kye-ahn of the ruling Uri Party read from a statement by 152 male lawmakers.
The 152 comprised 139 male lawmakers from Uri and the Democratic Labor Party, 10 from the main opposition conservative Grand National Party and three from the Millennium Democratic Party. There are 259 male lawmakers in the 299-member 17th Assembly.
The present family registry system requires that a male becomes the family head in all but a few exceptions, leaving space for awkward situations where an infant boy can assume the position of family head and is given more rights in handling family assets than his mother or grandmother.
Also, under the system, divorced women are often left out in the cold because even if their children live with them, the children are still considered part of her ex-husband's family registry.
If bills to abolish hoju get past the committee stage and are approved at tomorrow's plenary session, hoju will be replaced by a new system that creates separate records of birth, death, marriage and adoption for each individual member of a family.

The Korea Times
90% of Girls Consider Marriage a Choice
By Kim Rahn
Staff Reporter
Nine out of 10 teenage girls think marriage is a choice, not a must, according to a survey, while less than 20 percent of male and female teenagers think marriage is necessary.
According to a study by the Presidential Committee on the Ageing Society and Population Policy and the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs, 16.8 percent of teenagers said people should get married. The research was conducted last September on 11,250 fifth and sixth graders at elementary schools and students at middle and high schools nationwide.
Girls outnumbered boys when asked whether marriage was a choice, as 90 percent of girls surveyed said marriage is not necessary, while 77.2 percent of boys agreed.

The Korea Times
157,000 Children Adopted Overseas
By Bae Ji-sook
Staff Reporter
A total of 157,145 Korean children were adopted by foreigners during the past 50 years, the Overseas Korean Foundation reported Tuesday, and the majority of the children went to the United States.
The foundation, an organization affiliated with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, said that 103,095 of the adopted children were sent to the U.S., while France, Sweden and Denmark received 11,090, 8,953 and 8,571, respectively.
The year 1985 saw the greatest number of overseas adoptions, with 8,837 children being received abroad. According to reports the number has steadily begun to decrease by 1,000 to 2,000 every year.

The Hankyoreh
4 in 10 teen girls unhappy with her appearance
Plastic surgery viewed as solution by many, study shows

A high school student, Yu Na-yeong, 18, shot an 18-minute drama called "Michuhwanmong" ahead of graduation. It is the story of a girl worrying over the fact that she has "single-lidded" eyes, or without a crease in the lids when she opens them fully.
In Korea, it is often thought that "double eyelids" improves one’s appearance, in emulation of the shape of Western eyes.
Yu had watched the mainstream movie "200 Pound Beauty" with some of her friends. In the movie, an obese woman was reborn into a beauty after undergoing full-body plastic surgery. Then she managed to reconcile with the "past" and succeeded in work and love. About the movie, Yu commented, "The movie has received some favorable criticism that it does a good job of addressing the social problem of an appearances-first attitude, but I felt that it encouraged plastic surgery."