Archive

The Twin Cities Community Newswire
2008.11.01
Dialogue with lawmakers: Minnesota Korean adoptees meet with National Assembly members to discuss rights and roles of adoptees
BY MARTHA VICKERY , KOREAN QUARTERLY
October 05, 2008
Whether some strategic legislation would make the way easier for the hundreds of Korean adoptees who return to their birth country to live and work, or the thousands who visit there annually, was the topic of a meeting at the University of Minnesota of nine South Korean legislators with representatives of three Minnesota organizations of adult Korean adoptees.
The legislators are members of the Grand National Party, one of South Korea’s more conservative parties, sent as a delegation to observe the Republican National Convention, held in St. Paul the first weekend of September.

JoongAng Daily
Information fair a success despite rain
October 27, 2008
Despite the chilly weather and light rain on Saturday, about 2,000 expatriates took part in the 2008 Information Fair and Flea Market held at Seoul City Hall Plaza.
Organized by the Seoul Global Center, a Seoul Metropolitan Government-run help center for people who are new to the capital, this is the event’s fifth year.
Through events like the fair, the city aims to help expatriates adjust to life in Korea.
During the five-hour fair, a total of 50 organizations and companies - including the European Union Chamber of Commerce in Korea, the National Museum of Korea, Global Overseas Adoptee’s Link, Asiana Airlines and Woori Bank - set up booths to provide information on topics such as education, medical insurance and the city’s foreign community.

The Korea Herald
2008.1029
Calls for understanding Korean adoptees
A lack of public information that could alleviate stereotypes that have antagonize overseas Korean adoptees is an issue yet to be given a solution.
Speaking at the 43rd American Studies Association of Korea International Conference at Seoul National University last week, Eleana Kim, anthropology professor at the University of Rochester, said that she feels that the Korean government-sponsored organizations guiding overseas adoptees who are searching for their biological parents or aiding them in adjusting to life here have not provided services that are sufficiently comprehensive.
Kim's presentation, titled "Motherlands and Mother Love: Figuring Korean Adoptees in Global Korea," was one of the 10 sessions that was conducted at the conference which explored various issues pertaining to the globalization of Korea.
Kim said that instead of efficiently providing the proper information through literature or other forms of communication, "the Korean government has used overseas adoptees simply as emblems of globalization who could bridge the east and the west," Kim said.

Joongang Daily
October 20, 2008
Abandoned Korean girl finds home in Hong Kong
HONG KONG - A Korean girl called Jade who was adopted by a high-ranking Dutch diplomat in Korea in 2000 and then abandoned six years later in Hong Kong has found a new family.
The nine-year-old has been adopted by an expatriate family in Hong Kong and currently lives a normal life, an official at the Hong Kong Social Welfare Department said Saturday.
For reasons of privacy, further details about the adoptive parents cannot be disclosed, the official added.
Jade was adopted in January 2000 when she was four months old by Dutch diplomat Raymond Poeteray and his wife, who were stationed in Korea.

The New York Times
Opinion

Published: October 17, 2008
To the Editor:
Re “Korea Aims to End the Stigma of Adoption and Stop ‘Exporting’ Babies” (news article, Oct. 9):
That South Korea is working to encourage adoption within its own country is laudable. But even if South Koreans become more accepting of adoptive families, that will not address the underlying issue: the societal prejudice against unwed mothers and their children.

The New York Times
Published: October 8, 2008
Korea Aims to End Stigma of Adoption and Stop ‘Exporting’ Babies

By NORIMITSU ONISHI
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.

International Herald Tribune
Published: September 17, 2007
With faith, an American adoptee's search for his father ends on death row
By Choe Sang-Hun

SEOUL: Aaron Bates, growing up a happy child in the American family that adopted him when he was 5, always wondered who his biological parents were and whether they were alive. After two decades, his search has led him to a prisoner on death row in South Korea.
Sung Nak Joo, 58, who says he is Bates's birth father (and is accepted as such by Bates despite genetic data suggesting otherwise) is one of the longest-serving death row inmates in South Korea. If the country resumes hanging condemned prisoners - the last executions took place in 1997 - he probably will be among the first to be executed.

The Korea Times
10-02-2008 17:08
The Face of Adoption
By Andrei Lankov
For decades, South Korea was the major source of adopted babies throughout the Western world. According to a recent estimate, over the years 1950-2000, some 150,000 Korean infants found a new home overseas.
Nowadays, the Korean adoptees form a large community ― and in recent years they have begun to rediscover their connection to Korea.
Most of the infants were adopted by middle and upper-middle class families who had next to no information on Korea _ and in many cases were not that interested in this East Asian country. This meant that many Korean adoptees grew up without any exposure to the Korean language and culture.

San Francisco Chronical
Sunday, September 14, 2008
'Asian Americans' documents the diaspora
Sandip Roy
Asian Americans in the Twenty-First Century
Oral Histories
Edited by Joann Faung Jean Lee

The Korea Herald
August 22, 2008
Number of Korean adoptees to U.S. dropping: State Dept.
The U.S. State Department issued visas for 939 Korean orphans last year, according to the department`s figures released recently.
The number compares with 1,376 for 2006, 1,668 in 2005, 1,773 in 2004 and 1,817 for 2003.
Korean nongovernmental organizations have called on their government to look into irregularities involving international adoption agencies in Korea, citing alleged abuse cases involving Korean adoptees abroad.
They said earlier this year that six cases of international adoption from Korea were made in the past decades without their mothers` consent, that the cases were revealed upon the adoptees being reunited with their Korean families as adults.