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Korea Struggles to Shed Baby-Expo= rter Image

By Kim Rahn
Staff Reporter

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Volunteers take care of babies who will be adopted to domestic and overseas homes, at a childcare center of Holt Children’s Services in central <= st1:City w:st=3D"on">Seoul, Wednesday.= The government designated May 11 as “Adoption Day” to promote domes= tic adoption, and will hold an inaugural ceremony today. / Yonhap

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S= outh Koreans have just begun to develop positive attitudes toward adoption, owin= g to many celebrities adopting babies and stories about adoptees looking for the= ir roots here.

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T= he country marks its first Adoption Day today to promote domestic adoption and boost public awareness about this issue. It has been trying to shake off its reputation as a “baby exporting” country.

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H= owever, no one has been willing to hear the voices of birthmothers who are sufferer= s of family separation, but are accused of playing the villain's role in giving = up their babies.

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&= #8220;Neither I nor my child or my parents committed a crime. I was forced to give up my = son for adoption as a single mother,” said a 48-year-old woman, who wante= d to be identified by her surname Kim, during a discussion on Tuesday, two days before Adoption Day.

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KoRoot, a center for overseas adoptees, Global Overseas Adoptees' Link (G.O.A'L), a= nd Women's News organized the discussion in central Seoul under the theme of “Rethink= ing the Culture of Patriarchy in the Context of Overseas Adoption: From Voices = of Birthmothers and Overseas Adoptees.”

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I= t was a rare occasion here for birthmothers of adoptees to speak out their opinions about the adoption issue in public.

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&= #8220;We need to think of overseas adoption from a birthmothers' point of view and t= ry to understand how the nation's patriarchy has forced them to give up their babies. They are victims, not sinners,” Rev. Kim Do-hyun, director of KoRoot, said.

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M= ost of the children adopted to overseas countries in the 1970s and 1980s were those from poor families, and those in the 1990s and 2= 000s were mainly children of single mothers.

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&= #8220;The main factor forcing birthmothers not to raise their own children is our society's general idea of patriarchy _ baby girls are abandoned due to the preference for boys, single mothers are discriminated against as unmarried women's pregnancies are considered shameful, and sometimes a man who would marry a single woman with children asks the woman to give up her children f= or a family with his own blood line,” Rev. Kim said.

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H= e also said many birthmothers suffer from post traumatic stress disorders includin= g a sense of guilt, thinking the adoption was their fault.

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J= ane Jeong Trenka, an adoptee = and author of “The Language of Blood,” a story about adoptees, said her la= te birthmother, like many other birthmothers, had no other choice but to put h= er child up for adoption.

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H= er birthmother had to allow Trenka and her sister = to be adopted by people from the U.S. because their alcoholic father tried to kill them.

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&= #8220;I think the birthmothers' and single mothers' cases are similar to those of comfort women, who were also silenced for 50 years, and who suffered at the hands of men and violence, but were a group unable to speak out because of society's patriarchal ideas about women and their defiled bodies,” Trenka said.

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T= he birthmother Kim, who gave up raising her son as a single mother, also said = she suffered from depression and autism after allowing her child to be adopted.=

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&= #8220;My parents and I decided to go for adoption because he would face discriminati= on and other difficulties as a child of a single mother. Unaware that he had b= een adopted overseas, I tried to meet him again a few years later. When I learn= ed of his overseas adoption, I was so frustrated at the fact that I would never see him again,” she said.

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K= im, who once thought about illegally visiting the <= st1:place w:st=3D"on">U.S. where her son was adopte= d, fortunately had a chance to meet the son last December.

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&= #8220;But I only felt a gap_ my son and I did not share culture, language, food and everything. When being with him, I felt like a glass wall stood between him= and me,” Kim said, holding back tears.

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S= he said she mustered up her courage to appear at the discussion, hoping that it wou= ld create momentum to prevent overseas adoption and to urge birthmothers to me= et their children.

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&= #8220;Adoptees have curiosity about their roots, about their birthmothers. When the curios= ity continues for 10, 20, or 30 years without being resolved, it turns to grief= . We should stop producing more grief,” Kim said.

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rahnita@koreatimes.co.kr

05= -10-2006 17:25

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