Archive

Adoption & Fostering
Volume 32 Number 3 2008
Degrading attitudes related to foreign appearance: Interviews with Swedish female adoptees from Asia
Frank Lindblad and Sonja Signell
The Stress Research Institute, Stockholm
Key words:
international adoption, transracial adoption, degrading attitudes, prejudice, racism, discrimination, women

The New York Times
January 7, 2009
Ex-Prostitutes Say South Korea and U.S. Enabled Sex Trade Near Bases
By CHOE SANG-HUN
SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea has railed for years against the Japanese government’s waffling over how much responsibility it bears for one of the ugliest chapters in its wartime history: the enslavement of women from Korea and elsewhere to work in brothels serving Japan’s imperial army.

Now, a group of former prostitutes in South Korea have accused some of their country’s former leaders of a different kind of abuse: encouraging them to have sex with the American soldiers who protected South Korea from North Korea. They also accuse past South Korean governments, and the United States military, of taking a direct hand in the sex trade from the 1960s through the 1980s, working together to build a testing and treatment system to ensure that prostitutes were disease-free for American troops.

Oh My News
Published 2008-12-17
Genes, Schemes and International Adoption:
Solo show 'Black Tie' puts Korean adoptee Miriam Yung Min Stein's search for identity on the stage
Jan Creutzenberg (RhusHeesen)

In the Old Testament, Miriam is the Hebrew woman who hides baby Moses in a reed basket at the shores of Nile and watches how an Egyptian princess finds and subsequently adopts the future prophet. The story of another Miriam begins quite similar, but it did not happen in biblical times.

From Hampshire Public Radio
Word of Mouth
THE PROBLEM WITH GLOBAL ADOPTION
By Virginia Prescott on Monday, November 10, 2008.
http://www.nhpr.org/node/18966
LISTEN: WINDOWS MEDIA | MP3
International adoptions are steadily rising in the U.S., Canada and Europe. In 1995, around 22,000 children were adopted from developing countries. In 2006, that number swelled to just under 40,000. More than half of those kids were brought to homes here in the U.S. Behind those numbers is mounting evidence that some of those babies are not really orphans at all.

Foreign Policy
www.foreignpolicy.com
November/December 2008
The Lie We Love
By E. J. Graff
Foreign adoption seems like the perfect solution to a heartbreaking imbalance: Poor countries have babies in need of homes, and rich countries have homes in need of babies. Unfortunately, those little orphaned bundles of joy may not be orphans at all.
ALEXANDER MARTINEZ/AFP/Getty Images

The Boston Globe
December 11, 2008
(plus two letters to the editor at the bottom)
The problem with saving the world's 'orphans'
By E.J. Graff
IT'S THE TIME of year when we are deluged with appeals to save the world's millions of orphans. On TV, in the newspaper, in our mailboxes, we see sad-eyed children who are starved for food, clothes, and affection. Surely only Ebenezer Scrooge (or his Seuss-ical incarnation, the Grinch) could turn away with a hard heart.
But when these appeals are combined with glamorous examples like Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt's world adoption tour, would-be humanitarians can arrive at a dangerous belief: Western families can - and should - help solve this "world orphan crisis" by adopting.

The Korea Times
12-07-2008
Adoption Abused for Enrollment in Schools at US Military Camp
By Kang Shin-who
Staff Reporter
An increasing number of Korean parents have their children adopted by Americans working for the U.S. military to enroll them at American schools on army bases, according to parents and school staff.
They say the number of adopted Korean students has recently risen at the Seoul American High School (SAHS), a Department of Defense (DoD) Dependent School at Yongsan Army Garrison in Seoul.

JoongAng Daily
Adopted from Russia with love to Korean home
December 06, 2008
Jang Su-in, 19, is like any other student at Chonnam Girls High School in Gwangju, South Jeolla, except for one thing - her appearance.
In Korea’s ethnically homogenous society, with her fair skin, high nose, deep double eyelids, brown eyes, long eyelashes and light-brown hair, this Russian teen certainly looks foreign in appearance, yet speaks Korean just as fluently as her classmates.
Jang was born to a Russian family and named Nastya Baskaeva, but since being adopted into a Korean family seven years ago, she has lived in Korea.
One of six siblings, Jang grew up with her birth parents in the remote village of Mosdok in southern Russia, so remote it takes a two-hour flight and then a two-hour drive to reach from Moscow. Due to the family’s poverty and with her father too old to work, Jang was not able to go to school

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.

Chosun Ilbo
2008.10.30
Cho Byung-kuk: Lifelong Guardian Angel of Adoptees
At the Holt Children’s Service Pediatric Clinic on the morning of October 20, Dr. Cho Byung-kuk, the clinic’s 75-year-old ex-director, was examining a nine-year-old girl who will be adopted into the U.S. soon. The gray-haired woman was shorter than 160cm and slightly hunched. However, she quickly and skillfully examined the girl. Having finished the examination, she gasped for breath, tapping her shoulder with one hand. Without respite, a staffer immediately brought another child in to her office.
Cho is the “godmother of adopted children.” She has checked the health of adoptees at the Holt Children’s Service Pediatric Clinic and the Holt Ilsan Center for five decades. She actually retired in 1993. But she couldn’t stop caring for children, so continued the job. She has treated more than 50,000 adoptees until now. Unfortunately, the severe pain in her shoulders will force her to abandon her stethoscope soon.
Cho first became involved with Holt Children’s Services in 1958 while working as a resident doctor at Yonsei University Severance Hospital. “There were a lot of abandoned children after the Korean War. Children with contagious diseases, children who became retarded because of malnutrition…,” she said.
When she saw ailing children get healthy only a month or two after she treated them, she decided to dedicate the rest of her life to them. “I did the job because I like children,” she noted. “I felt pity for abandoned kids and wanted to help them find new families.