The adoption of South Korean children into Western families has been
ongoing since the end of the Korean War (1950-1953). Since then, more than
200,000 children have been sent overseas for adoption, with more than half
adopted to the United States, and the rest to Western Europe, Canada, and
Australia. South Korea’s foreign adoption program is the longest runn=
ing
program in the world, and is also a source of continual political controver=
sy
and public debate. The following presents a brief overview of the history of
adoption from Korea and addresses some of the cultural and social factors t=
hat
are related to the adoption issue.
It is often said that one reason children from Korea need to be ado=
pted
by families in foreign countries is because there is no tradition of adopti=
on
in Korean culture. This is, in fact, only partially true. In his book Ko=
rean
Adoption and Inheritance (Cornell University 1983), anthropologist Mark
Peterson argues that adoption in pre-modern Korea was historically linked to
the problem of family inheritance and continuity of the bloodline. Since the
Confucian transformation of Korean society in the 17th century,
adoption has been a solution for ensuring the continuation of the
father’s bloodline in the case of infertility or the inability to have
sons.
In the 17th century, the ruling class (yangban)
adopted an orthodox form of Confucianism from China, and instituted the
Confucian Clan Code as a state ideology. This code excluded women from inhe=
ritance
and thus drastically reduced their social status, whereas it gave men,
especially first-sons, exclusive control over politics, property, and the
family. A woman’s value under this system was directly related to her
ability to produce sons for her husband’s family, in order to ensure =
the
continuity of the patrilineal bloodline. With this transformation to
neo-Confucianism, males became the exclusive heirs to family property and w=
ere
the only ones permitted to perform ancestral rites. According to this code,
only male relatives of a younger generation could be adopted from the
patriline, usually between the ages of 20 and 30, so that they could inherit
property and uphold the tradition of ancestor worship. After the yangban=
class instituted this conservative system, it gradually spread through Kore=
an
society, becoming the ideal model for family and social organization.
Before this conservative transformation of Korean society, however,
women and men had equal rights to inheritance and women’s family gene=
alogy
was as important as men’s. There is evidence that until the 17th=
century, unrelated abandoned children were often adopted, as well as childr=
en
related through the wife’s family. In addition, widows and unmarried
women also adopted children. Despite this evidence of Korean adoption pract=
ices
that share similarities to contemporary Western adoption, Mark Peterson in =
1977
reported that Koreans understood adoption only in neo-Confucian terms, and =
that
they found the American adoption of non-relatives to be
“incomprehensible.”
The international adoption of South Korean children first began as a
humanitarian response to the needs of thousands of children who were orphan=
ed
or separated from their families as a result of the Korean War. Many of the=
se
children, born to Korean women and fathered by American and European
servicemen, were stigmatized because of their racial difference and
illegitimate backgrounds. Immediately following the war, the South Korean
government established Child Placement Service in 1954, and the following y=
ear,
Harry Holt, a evangelical Christian from Oregon, responded to the plight of=
the
mixed-race children by adopting eight of them. By 1956, Harry and Bertha Ho=
lt
had established Holt Adoption Agency, and the Seventh Day Adventists and the
Catholic Relief Service had also set up placement services for overseas
adoptions. Between 1953 and 1960, around 3,500 Korean children were sent for
adoption abroad; more than 90% of this first wave was of mixed-race parenta=
ge.
By the 1960s, full-Korean children began to be adopted overseas thr=
ough
the four government approved adoption agencies, Holt Adoption Agency, Social
Welfare Society (formerly Child Placement Service), Eastern Child Welfare
Society and Korea Social Service. The postwar period in Korea was one marke=
d by
massive poverty and large-scale social and economic transformations. South
Korea, once a predominantly rural, agricultural economy of extended family
households, became, within one generation, an urban, industrialized economy=
of
nuclear family households. By the mid-1980s, three-quarters of the populati=
on
was living in urban areas. The social implications for this transformation =
have
been widespread. Young women from the countryside traveled alone to the cit=
ies
to find work in factories, often being exploited physically and sexually.
During the 1960s and 70s, poor female factory workers relinquished their
children for reasons of poverty and illegitimacy. As the Korean economy
improved in the 1980s, more liberal sexual practices among young people as =
well
as the loosening of the traditional family structure contributed to the pro=
blem
of unplanned pregnancies among single college-age women. Today, the majorit=
y of
babies relinquished for adoption are born to middle- or working-class unwed
mothers in their teens and early 20s.
Since the 1970s, there have been attempts to reduce the numbers of
adopted children, to completely stop international adoptions, and to encour=
age
domestic adoption by Koreans. Negative press coverage by the international
media during the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games focused on the adoption issue,
calling South Korea’s children its “greatest export.” In
response to this criticism, the government implemented a quota system, inte=
nding
to increase domestic adoption, and to gradually reduce international adopti=
ons
by three to five percent a year, with a projected end to adoptions by 2015.
From a peak of more than 8,000 children sent abroad in 1986 alone, adoptions
were reduced to around 2,200 per year by the early 1990s. During the 1997-98
IMF economic crisis, however, the decline in the number of adoptions was
reversed, as financial woes created desperate situations for families, and
increasing rates of divorce, domestic violence and bankruptcy coincided with
thousands of children being relinquished to the state. Adoptions increased =
by
nine percent between 1997 and 1998, and since then, overseas placements have
hovered above 2,000 per year. This history indicates that adoption policy a=
nd
practice in South Korea are exceptionally sensitive to economic fluctuations
and international opinion.
International adoption quickly became institutionalized in the early
1960s to become a population and social welfare policy that hindered the
development of alternative approaches for dealing with the needs of women a=
nd
children. Despite South Korea’s dramatic economic and political
development over the past 50 years, children continue to be born and
relinquished. Imagining an end of adoption from South Korea requires findin=
g an
adequate solution for the estimated 7,000 children who are in need of state
welfare intervention every year. In-country adoptions have been encouraged =
by
the government through media campaigns and education, and domestic adoption
reached a high of around 1,700 children in 1999. Still, adoption among South
Koreans is still predominantly parent-centered, and physically or mentally
disabled children often have no alternatives but to be placed in institutio=
nal
care or adopted by families overseas. There is no easy solution to the adop=
tion
issue. Nevertheless, understanding the factors that help perpetuate
international adoption is an important first step towards finding a solutio=
n.
The status of women in Korean culture is one factor that is essenti=
al
to understanding the adoption issue. After the Korean War, the new South Ko=
rean
government embraced the conservative Confucian ethics of pre-modern Korean
society. Although the South Korean constitution was influenced by American
democratic principles and included protections for civil rights, personal
liberties and the right to vote, the South Korean Family Law of 1960
effectively undermined the democratic rights of women by instituting male
patriarchy as a legal fact. Despite opposition from women’s groups, t=
he
new South Korean government claimed neo-Confucianism as an essential part of
Korean “heritage” and indigenous values, and ignored the
pre-Confucian tradition that gave greater equality and opportunity to women.
The Family Law essentially adapted the ancient Confucian Clan Code into mod=
ern
law.
Under the Family Law, only the eldest male member of the patrilinea=
ge
was recognized as the legal head of the household. He controlled the family
registry, inheritance, and the legal status of all members of the family.
Children born out of wedlock, therefore, were not legally recognized unless
they were included in their maternal grandfather’s family registry. W=
hen
a woman divorced her husband, she had no claims on the child, who was
considered the father’s legal property. Women’s rights groups
challenged the Family Law for nearly four decades, arguing for greater equa=
lity
for women, but it was not until 1991 that the contradictions between the
constitutional rights of women and the lack of rights afforded under the Fa=
mily
Law began to be addressed by the government.
Under the reformed law of 1991, it became possible for family membe=
rs
other than the eldest son to serve as the head of household. It also allowed
husband and wife equal power in deciding issues of residence and property a=
nd
prohibited age discrimination in inheritance. With this revision, women were
also able to include their children on their own family registry, instead o=
f having
to petition their fathers or husbands.
These important legal changes, along with the many advances made possible by democratization, modernization, and globalization have helped improve the status of Korean women, yet many barriers to equal rights and opportunities for women still exist. The preference for sons in South Korea is one of the strongest in the world, and is reflected in unbalanced gender ratios and higher rates of female infant mortality, altho= ugh there are some signs that this preference is softening among the young urban population. Nevertheless, job discrimination and sexual harassment in the workplace are still prevalent, and women’s wages continue to lag behi= nd men’s. As became clear during the IMF crisis, women are the last to be hired and first to be fired during periods of economic difficulty, and it is often assumed that once a woman has children she will give up her professio= n.
A primary reason that couples from Western countries have turned to
places like South Korea to adopt is because they are unable to adopt healthy
white babies in their own countries. Cultural acceptance of single motherho=
od
in the West, along with family support and government aid for single parents
has created a situation where more than 90% of single women decide to raise
their children on their own. Korean culture is very family-oriented, and the
shame accompanying single motherhood is often too great for a woman to endu=
re.
For a woman without financial or emotional support from her family, social
network, or from the government, to raise a child on one’s own is an
impossible choice. Effective sex education programs to help prevent unplann=
ed
pregnancies among young women and teenagers are key to reducing the numbers=
of
children relinquished for adoption every year. In addition, greater financi=
al
and emotional support for single mothers, and increased openness among South
Koreans to domestic adoption are vital to seeking an end to South KoreaR=
17;s
dependence on international adoption.