Archive

Joongang Daily
11.26.2008

Loving message for a lost mother
Donald Gordon Bell, known only as A-20 when he was a child at a Seoul orphanage, has long sought his biological mother to give her a message. But this 56-year-old adoptee’s message is not one of resentment, as one with a stereotypical view of adoptees might assume.
Instead, it is to convey his gratitude for her decision to give him away. He said it comes from an understanding of the situation she found herself in. “I want her to know I don’t have any grudge against her,” said Bell, who grew up in Los Angeles after he was adopted at the age of four.

The Korea Herald
2008.11.25
Christmas fundraiser for orphanage
Just days before Christmas, Sam Dong Boys Town Orphanage will host a benefit party to make this holiday season a memorable one for almost 70 orphans.
Sam Dong Boys Town Orphanage, located in Seoul, currently houses 69 potential adoptees, some of whom are less than a year old.
Boys Town is also considered a historic orphanage because it was first established during the Korean War by the U.S. Armys 5th regimental combat team.
I hope that we can continue to recruit more volunteers to help out at this orphanage, said Thomas J. Fortunato, the main organizer for the benefit. If you are looking for a way to give back to the community, this is definitely a worthy cause.

The Korea Herald
2008.11.20
More babies adopted locally
The number of domestic adoptions exceeded the international adoption figure for the first time in Korea last year, according to data released by a research agency yesterday.
In a statistical report by the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs, the total number of children adopted locally increased from 1,332 in 2006 to 1,388 in 2007, while internationally adopted children decreased from 1,899 in 2006 to 1,264 last year.
In an overall view, the total number of adoptions is dropping but international adoption figures are falling at a faster pace, said Chang Young-sik, senior fellow at the statistics development team at the institute. This is partly because more people are now open to adoptions, a fact that was kept mum in the past.
This is an interesting finding due to the fact that, ever since 1953, foreign adoptions have been much more popular than domestic adoptions.

The Korea Herald
2008.11.26
Part II:Am I American or am I Korean?

Following is Part II of a three part series on growing up adopted. Part III will be in tomorrows Expat Living. To comment, e-mail [email protected]. Richard Spalding can be reached through his blog www.inmyseoul.com -- Ed.
From Part I
My mothers favorite childhood story about me was when I paraded around the house with an American flag, playing Bruce Springsteens Born in the USA on my Playskool cassette player, and singing along at the top of my lungs. Ironically, this song was my favorite while I was growing up. It is ironic because I was not born in the USA.

The Korea Herald
11.23.08
Am I American or am I Korean?
Following is Part I of a three part series on growing up adopted. Part II will be in tomorrows Expat Living. To comment, e-mail [email protected]. Richard Spalding can be reached through his blog www.inmyseoul.com - Ed.
My mothers favorite childhood story about me was when I paraded around the house with an American flag, playing Bruce Springsteens Born in the USA on my Playskool cassette player, and singing along at the top of my lungs. Ironically, this song was my favorite while I was growing up. It is ironic because I was not born in the USA.
I celebrate Oct. 20 as my birthday. I say celebrate because I do not know the exact date of my birth. The reason my parents dont know my birthday is because I was adopted from the Grace Orphanage in Daejeon, Korea, when I was about 5 years old. My adoptive parents had to assign a birthday to me for legal purposes, and they chose Oct. 20, 1980.
Yes, they even had to pick the year for my birthday.

JoongAng Daily
October 29, 2008
Searching for the holy grail amid the ruins of war
[Perspective]
With the won’s tailspin causing much expat distress these days, and with the “worst of the panic” clearly not over (despite what you may have read in my last column), I decided to stick to a good, old-fashioned inspirational story this week.
As such, it was very lucky that I happened to meet Misty Ann Edgecomb, a journalist from Maine in the United States. She came here in late September on a Fulbright grant to research just such a story - an account of what she says is the first international adoption of a Korean child by a single parent.
It begins when Edgecomb’s then 24-year-old grandfather-in-law, Paul Raynor, arrives in Seoul during the Korean War as a U.S. soldier.

Adoption Mosaic
The Constellation, Fall 2008 Newsletter
In the Shadow of My Family Tree
by Jae Ran Kim
It all began with Martha Stewart. Yes, the same domestic diva whose
recent decorating consisted of contemplating paint swatches for a jail
cell; a few years back, I was taken with an issue of her eponymous selftitled

Adoption Mosaic
The Constellation
Fall 2008 Newsletter
Kim Park Nelson
Interview by Livia Montana
Livia Montana: You’re working on an oral history project with Korean adopted adults. How did you get interested in the project?
Kim Park Nelson: I’d been thinking about it for quite a long time, but I actually started it in 2002 as my Ph.D. dissertation project. I’d seen research that was supposed to be about adoptees but that didn’t really take adoptees’ voices into account. For instance, there’s a lot of adoption-related social work research where researchers would ask parents about their kids. Those answers were then used to represent the point of view of adoptees. Of course that’s not actually the point of view of adoptees, that’s the point of view of adoptive parents. So my initial intent was to work on a project that focused on the experiences of Korean adoptees.

A Channel NewsAsia
November 1, 2008

Korean adoptees meet birthparents at homecoming
By Channel NewsAsia's Korea Bureau Chief Lim Yun Suk | Posted: 20 August 2008 0056 hrs

SEOUL : In recent years, South Korea has been promoting domestic adoption - partly to downplay the "baby exporting country" label.

Chosun Ilbo
October 21, 2008
Korean-American Academics to Throw Light on Adoption
Korean-born academics who were adopted by Americans will attend a symposium titled “From Global to Glocal: The Future of American Studies” by the American Studies Association of Korea at Seoul National University to discuss adoption, still something of a taboo subject in Korea.
In a session titled “Korean Adoptee” on Friday, Eleana Kim (University of Rochester) will give a talk under the heading “Beyond Motherlands and Mother Love: Figuring Korean Adoptees in Global Korea,” and Kim Park Nelson (Minnesota State University) under the heading “Uri Nara, Our Country: Global and Translocal Communities of Korean American Adoptees”. They will describe how, based on their own experience, foreign adoptees who return to their motherland experience identity transformations through their new daily life.
ASAK president Kim Seong-kon said adoption, along with globalization, diaspora and immigration, has emerged as key topics in the culture review and theory field for the last three or four years.
The ASAK is a nationwide academic society whose members include American specialists in politics, economics, history, and culture.