Birth Mothers and Transnational Adoption Practice in South Korea: Virtual Mothering by Hosu Kim

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 294-296
Author(s):  
Jenny Heijun Wills
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Transnational Adoption ◽  
Birth Mothers

scholarly journals THE PORTRAYAL OF A KOREAN ADOPTEE’S EXPERIENCE IN NICOLE CHUNG’S ALL YOU CAN EVER KNOW: A MEMOIR OF ADOPTION

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 28
Author(s):  
Rizqia Nuur Maziyya
Keyword(s):  
Identity Development ◽  
South Korea ◽  
Transnational Migration ◽  
Adopted Children ◽  
Transnational Adoption ◽  
Western Countries ◽  
White American ◽  
Korean Adoptees ◽  
Birth Country ◽  
Save The Children

Transnational adoption has become one of the factors of transnational migration to Western countries, including America. Transnational adoption can be viewed from at least two perspectives, South Korea as the origin country and America as the targeted country. From the birth country, transnational adoption becomes a way to help the children from poverty, have a better future, and contribute to the birth country when they return. From the adoption-targeted country, this adoption is a humanitarian way to save the children from poverty, primitive way of life, and God’s blessing. One of the countries which regularly “send” the children to Western countries is South Korea. The children become Korean adoptees and mostly living in white American neighborhoods. Living with white Americans has shaped the Korean adoptees’ behavior and way of thinking same as Americans. Korean adoptees face various problems, starting from adjusting themselves in new environment, finding their cultural roots and identity, and struggling to find their biological parents. This study employed Phinnes’ ethnic identity development to make sense of the experience of a Korean adoptee called Nicole Chung in her memoir, All You Can Ever Know: A Memoir of Adoption. Through the discussion, it can be understood how transnational adoption programs become national agenda and big business field since it is not expensive to have children from other countries. There is also an assumption that the children will have better and happier life when they are taken to America and other western countries. However, throughout their life as adopted children in America, the children also find difficulties, especially in finding their identity.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Kori A. Graves
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
African Americans ◽  
The United States ◽  
Adopted Children ◽  
Transnational Adoption ◽  
World War ◽  
Birth Mothers ◽  
Adoptive Family ◽  
Displaced Children

The introduction provides a brief history of the development of US domestic adoption, and African Americans’ roles in US and transnational adoption in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Since the professionalization of adoption in the United States largely evolved around the needs of birth mothers, children, and adoptive parents who were white, African Americans’ efforts to care for orphaned and displaced children through formal and informal adoptions has been underappreciated. The introduction describes the ways African Americans adopted children in the United States and, after World War II, foreign-born children of African American soldiers. This approach provides a foundation for understanding how African Americans’ participation in Korean transnational adoption was similar to their domestic adoption efforts and their efforts to adopt World War II GI children. It also suggests reasons why efforts to increase the professionalization and standardization of Korean transnational adoption reduced African Americans’ participation in this method of adoptive family formation.

Asian North American Adoption Narratives

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenny Heijun Wills
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Young People ◽  
South Korea ◽  
North American ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Adoptive Parents ◽  
Transnational Adoption ◽  
The World ◽  
Asian North American

Transnational adoption from Asia began in the 1950s as an institutionalized practice. Since, hundreds of thousands of young people from countries such as South Korea, China, India, Vietnam, and the Philippines have been adopted and raised primarily in white families in places like the United States, Canada, and Australia but also Scandinavian countries and countries in western Europe. What began as a relief program for multiracial “war orphans” in South Korea has blossomed considerably and affects countries and people around the world; transnational adoption has become a popular industry that targets young people in countries including Guatemala, Brazil, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Haiti, and Russia. Today, transnational adoption continues to be a lucrative industry, though the practice seems to be dwindling in popularity and certain “sending nations” have recently declared its abolition (i.e., Ethiopia in 2017). The United States is by far the most prolific “receiving nation,” and is implicated as one of the greatest instigators, given that nation’s military presence in places such as South Korea and Vietnam in and around the years that transnational adoption expanded from those countries. While not nearly as many Canadians (in comparison to Americans) adopt from countries in Asia, adoptees raised in that country have unique experiences mainly due to vastly distinctive regionalism, that makes, for instance, the identities of Asian/Québécois adoptees uniquely precarious. Mexico is considered a “sending nation,” and since race and class factors rarely see young people both immigrating and migrating from the same nation under the auspices of transnational adoption (though it is not always the case; see, e.g., the United States’ history of sending black children for adoption to various European nations), it is mostly not included in conversations about transnational Asian/North American adoption. For decades, literature about transnational Asian/American adoption centered on adoptive parents, social workers, and pro-adoption activists. In the 1990s, Asian adoptees around the world began to recount their experiences of racial and cultural alienation, among other things, in life writing and poetry. Adoptees in North America were no exception. Asian/North American authors (as well as non-Asian writers) began exploring these subjectivities, too, usually in the context of examining racial, cultural, and national issues related to other Asian/North American subjects who were not subjects experienced. Across most of these representations—by adoptees and non-adoptees alike—the theme of personal and collective history is a notable focus, and adoptees are imagined as another meaningful example of the paradoxical and complex ways Asian/North Americans’ paper histories, immigration rights, and so-called model minorityhood have been levied. Transnational Asian/North American adoption continues to be a topic of fascination for so many writers and audiences and these representations cross genres, aesthetic modes, and narrative styles.

Conclusion

2020 ◽  
pp. 223-234
Author(s):  
Kori A. Graves
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Mixed Race ◽  
Football Player ◽  
The United States ◽  
Korean Women ◽  
Transnational Adoption ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Korean Children ◽  
International Media ◽  
Western Nations

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Korean transnational adoption would evolve to place more full Korean than mixed-race Korean children with families in Western nations. This shift was a consequence of political, social, economic, and cultural changes in South Korea and the United States that altered adoption priorities in both nations. As Western nations invested more money in orphanages and facilities to care for displaced, poor, and orphaned Korean children in South Korea, the Korean government embraced transnational adoption as an economic and social welfare solution. This transition helped to make invisible the struggles of Korea’s mixed-race populations and the vulnerable Korean women who became entangled in military prostitution. International media scrutiny has brought attention to the tragic circumstances that shape the lives of mixed-race Koreans and the Korean women who continue to relinquish their children for adoption. Events like the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul and the return of Korean black NFL football player Hines Ward Jr. to Seoul after he received the Super Bowl MVP in 2006 have forced Korean political leaders to reckon with the historical legacies of gender and racial oppression that have contributed to the marginalization of these populations.

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