From The New York Times:
SEOUL, South Korea — Daunted by the stigma surrounding adoption here, Cho Joong-bae and Kim In-soon delayed expanding their family for years. When they finally did six years ago, Mr. Cho chose to tell his elderly parents that the child was the result of an affair, rather than admit she was adopted.
Babies awaited adoptive parents in Seoul, at Holt International, the leading adoption agency in South Korea.
“My parents later died believing that I’d had an affair,” said Mr. Cho, 48, a civil engineer who has since adopted a second daughter.
Now, with South Korea becoming more accepting of adoptive families, Mr. Cho and Ms. Kim feel they can be more open, with relatives and nonrelatives alike. Ms. Kim, 49, attributed the change partly to the growth of other nontraditional families, like those headed by single parents or including foreign spouses.
“We feel attitudes have changed,” she said.
Just how much, though, is the critical question as the South Korean government is pushing aggressively to increase adoptions by South Koreans and decrease what officials consider the shameful act of sending babies overseas for adoption. Since the 1950s, tens of thousands of South Korean children have been adopted by foreigners, mostly Americans, because of South Koreans’ traditional emphasis on family bloodlines and reluctance to adopt.
But last year, for the first time, more babies here were adopted by South Koreans than foreigners, as the government announced recently with great fanfare: 1,388 local adoptions compared with 1,264 foreign ones. What is more, South Korea — which still is one of the top countries from which Americans adopt — has set a goal of eliminating foreign adoptions altogether by 2012.
“South Korea is the world’s 12th largest economy and is now almost an advanced country, so we would like to rid ourselves of the international stigma or disgrace of being a baby-exporting country,” Kim Dong-won, who oversees adoptions at the Ministry of Health, said in an interview. “It’s embarrassing.”
To bolster domestic adoptions, the government last year began offering $90 monthly allowances per child for those who adopt children up to 12 years old, as well as more generous health benefits for the children. Even greater health benefits are now given to adopted disabled children.
The government also made it easier for South Koreans to adopt. Single people can now qualify, as well as older ones. Until last year, prospective adoptive parents could be no more than 50 years older than the child; now the age gap has been increased to 60 years. In addition, the government has made foreign adoptions more difficult by imposing a five-month waiting period before children can even be considered for overseas adoption. It also increased payments to foster parents to try to keep children inside South Korea longer and increase their chances of being adopted domestically.
The government’s goal has received much media attention and popular support here. But adoption agencies and some adoptive parents and experts say the government’s new policies are concerned less with the children’s welfare than with saving face. Increasing the age gap and allowing singles to adopt have lowered the standards for domestic adoptions in a way that could be detrimental to the children, they say, even as the government has created unnecessary obstacles to foreign ones. Read more…
I read this article in the Times last week. I’ve been chewing it over ever since. As a recent adoptive parent of a Korean child I have all of the feelings that you would expect: a sense of relief (that we beat the “deadline”), guilt (for removing my son from his birth culture), defensiveness (for the insinuation that my family is perceived as a national tragedy in Korea), but my overwhelming feeling with this story, and this issue, is irritation.
The Times did a pretty good job in trying to provide some context, cultural, historical and current, to the issue of Korean adoptions. The article raises a number of additional questions for me. I’m not sure if the absence of these issues is the fault of the paper or the South Korean government, but here goes.
What exactly is the Republic of Korea (ROK) government doing to change the domestic view and acceptance of adoption? Other than parading celebrities and putting pressure on adoption agencies…who then feel the need to refer Korean women to fake belly manufacturers?
What is the ROK doing in terms of post placement support? Sure, the adoption is somewhat less messy given that the children stay in the birth culture, but what about the identity questions adoption naturally raises for children, especially when the adoption is not open? And, is the $90 a month per child intended to help the child or the parents, and in what way?
Finally, what is the ROK doing to promote social acceptance and social support services for “unwed mothers”? Obviously, this is rhetorical question.
It seems to me that the agency director quoted in the Times article is correct. The ROK, as a burgeoning economy, and sees intercountry adoption as a loss of face…and I guess that it is. Yet, setting arbitrary goals to eliminate those adoptions only helps save face, it doesn’t help children, or families (Korean or otherwise). As the article points out, it effectively hurts children with special needs. And it certainly doesn’t help the birthmothers who are basically denied the right to parent.
Clearly, it would be disingenuous of me to say that I am anti-intercountry adoption. I love my son and the richness that learning about his birth culture is bringing to my life. To be honest, our family hasn’t ruled out the possibility of adopting a second child from Korea…provided that remains an option. So, whether it is because of or in spite of my love for the Korean culture and its people, one thing is clear to me …they better get this right.
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Hi Allison,
Thank you for bringing the issue of unwed moms up …
I am an adoptive father of a Korean daughter and am helping to further this conversation in Korea. It’s an important issue. Here’s a letter to the editor that was published in the New York Times in response to their story:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/18/opinion/lweb18korea.html?scp=1&sq=richard%20boas&st=cse
One of the problems are deeply rooted beliefs in Confucianism, even for those that are Christian.
The only road to immortality is an unbroken line of males, back into eternity and forward into eternity. All children ideally should be born into this unbroken lineage.
If a child has no father, the child does not belong to any lineage, and is driftless and has little place in society. So the culture has developed very negative views toward bearing children out of wedlock.
Koreans tend not to adopt, except for blood relatives, because an adopted child would not be part of the lineage (unbroken bloodline).
I’m not condoning these beliefs, but it might be useful to understand the source of these value systems and why they are difficult to eradicate.