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PRESSian
2009.05.07
"당신과 함께 지하철을 타는 것이 너무 좋습니다"
['입양인'이 말하는 입양①] 20만의 '입양인'들을 잊었나요?
기사입력 2009-05-07 오전 11:35:48
입양인. 상당수의 한국인에게는 낯선 단어일 것이다. 한국전쟁을 계기로 반세기가 훌쩍 넘는 긴 입양의 역사를 갖고 있는 한국이지만 '입양'은 입양 보내는 부모, 입양하는 부모, 입양되는 아이, 모두에게 '숨겨야 할 비밀'이었다.
그렇게 '비밀스럽게' 입양 보낸 수십만 명의 아이들은 이미 어른이 됐다. 더 이상 '아이(입양아)'가 아닌 이들은 스스로를 '입양인'이라고 부른다. 특히 다른 나라로 입양 보내졌던 20만 명의 해외 입양인들은 자신들이 태어남과 동시에 방출됐던 나라인 '한국'을 향해 질문한다. 한국에서 (해외) 입양은 어떤 의미였냐고.

Mother Jones
March/April 2009
Meet the Parents: The Dark Side of Overseas Adoption
Listen to an interview with the author.
http://www.motherjones.com/podcast/mojo-5-questions-international-adoption-scott-carney
After hours hunched behind the wheel of a rented Kia, flying past cornfields and small-town churches, I'm parked on a Midwestern street, trying not to look conspicuous. Across the way, a preteen boy dressed in silver athletic shorts and a football T-shirt plays with a stick in his front yard. My heart thumps painfully. I wonder if I'm ready to change his life forever.
I've been preparing for this moment for months in the South Indian metropolis of Chennai, talking to khaki-clad officers in dusty police stations and combing through endless stacks of court documents. The amassed evidence tells a heartrending tale of children kidnapped from Indian slums, sold to orphanages, and funneled into the global adoption stream. I've zeroed in on one case in particular, in which police insist they've tracked a specific stolen child in India to a specific address in the United States. Two days ago, the boy's parents asked me to deliver a message to the American family via their lawyer, seeking friendship and communication. But after traveling across 10 time zones to get here, I'm at a loss for how to proceed.

Mother Jones
November/December 2007 Issue
Did I Steal My Daughter? The Tribulations of Global Adoption
The answers are never easy when you enter the labrynth of global adoption.
By Elizabeth Larsen
I FIRST MET MY DAUGHTER in the lobby of the Westin Camino Real, the grandest hotel in Guatemala City. The night before, my husband Walter and I had soothed our nerves running on the treadmills in the fitness center, where a polite attendant handed us plush white towels and spritzed the equipment with a flowery disinfectant. Afterward I wrote a series of letters to our daughter. Because children adopted from overseas usually have little information about their history, parents are advised to document the trip as best they can, creating what is known as an "adoption story."
Reading the journal now, more than two years later, it feels so self-conscious. "We've been waiting so long to meet you—almost seven months!" the first entry reads. "Ever since you were seven days old and the agency emailed us your beautiful photos, we've wondered what you will be like. We fell in love with you that minute!" Gone is any sense of the surreal. Walter and I already had two biological sons; now we were jetting into a Third World country with the sole aim of leaving with one of its daughters. (Wanting a girl, we'd opted for the sure bet that adoption offers.) I mentioned, but didn't dwell on, the brutal poverty outside our hotel windows, focusing instead on how my sons were looking forward to meeting their little sister.

JoongAng Daily
April 03,2009
Fostering families
[Changing attitudes to raising children]‘I always knew these children would leave someday, but the pain of separation was unimaginable.’
A constant runny nose plagued the baby boy, who looked like he’d never had a haircut. The social worker who had brought the 10-month-old child to the home of Yun Ik-sang, a 48-year-old pastor, said the problem was rhinitis.
The social worker handed the pastor a bag containing three diapers and a half-finished bottle of baby formula. She said the child’s mother had handed Yeong-su (not his real name) over to the foster care organization and would come back for him when her situation improved.
Yun and Lee greet their children after school. There are only 10 pupils in total at the village school.

JoongAng Daily
April 1, 2009
Unwed moms brave stigma, lower incomes
[First in a two-part series]
Aeranwon trains, shelters, counsels women with nowhere else to go
She might not have much money, but she still has her son.
Despite deeply embedded prejudice against unwed mothers in Korea, Kim, 36, decided to keep her child after she broke up with her boyfriend.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Sunday, March 15, 2009

International adoptions by Americans get really tough
By Sally Kalson, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Katie Houser tried to adopt a child from Honduras four years ago, but gave up when that country's government stopped releasing children.
Late last year, she shifted her focus to Ethiopia, where the process was taking about six months.

The Korea Times
2.25.09
Network for Unwed Mothers Established
By Bae Ji-sook
Staff Reporter
An American physician is working to support unwed mothers in Korea.
Richard Boas has recently established the ``Korean Unwed Mothers Support Network'' to support tens of thousands of unmarried mothers in the country. From supporting research on the actual lives of these women to meeting policymakers to emphasize the importance of their livelihood, the network is striving to help single mothers raise their children on their own.

SUSANNE'S CALL
Stop Sending Babies Abroad
Susanne is an adoptee in Sweden who published the following text in the Korea Herald, 17 December, 2003 calling for an immediate end to international adoption from Korea.

Please stop sending Korean babies for adoption to Sweden and other countries. Why? From my point of view as an adoptee, I want to emphasize several reasons.
The first is racism and discrimination against Korean women which, as an adult woman with an East Asian appearance, I and other Asian women face on a daily basis.
From Sweden, and other Western countries, there is a flourishing sex tourism to East and Southeast Asia. Some travel agencies have specialized in these kinds of tours and the horrifying business is affecting the adoptees. We become victims of this tragic sex tourism, as we are perceived and treated as prostitutes in Swedish society. Many Korean adopted women have been assaulted by words such as "whore, go home to your country," and some adoptees have even been attacked physically by Swedish people. The racism among Swedes toward Asians is very strong. This affects our lives and is a big burden on our sense of happiness and quality of life.

JoongAng Daily
February 16, 2009
Even fertile parents are deciding to adopt kids
Kang Eun-mi, living in Gwacheon, Gyeonggi, is happily married with three children: a 12-year-old son and two daughters, one aged six years and the other 17 months.
Kang said she loves all of her children, though only one of them is biologically hers. Kang adopted the two daughters when they were newborns.
“I wanted my son to have siblings,” Kang said. She adopted her two daughters though she was still physically capable of bearing more children, she said. Kang has been open about adoption with her family, relatives and neighbors as well as her two daughters.
“I see them as my own children. Sometimes I’m confused about which one is an adoptee and which one is not,” Kang said.