I think it’s important that we think about this and discuss it in some way, even those of us with Chinese children or soon-to-have Chinese children. It’s not unusual for grown Korean adoptees (KADs) to think of themselves as exports…or at least to think of Korean adoption on the whole as an export, and it won’t be unusual for our Chinese children either. It is best we have our eyes and hearts open to the reality at least of the possibility. Our children won’t live in a vacuum and they will hear these things and maybe even experience them.

Adoption has many painful aspects for the adoptee. It is not all rosy. Those of us living with Chinese children can attest that many of the same things told to us by KADs are the same things we live with day to day with our children.

There is a bittersweet aspect to it, even in the happiest of lives, and many unanswered questions of the heart for our children, no matter how deeply we love them or they love us.

I felt from the beginning that there might be a relatively small window for Chinese adoptions and wondered how our children would feel to have been born in that window. OTOH, Korean adoptions have gone on for 50 years.

Karin

>The shame of Korea’s orphan exportation
>
>
>Cho Jeong Lae, writer and Endowed Professor at Dongguk University
>
>There are more than 200 countries on this earth. Among these, the
>Republic of Korea ranks 12th economically. Every Korean knows this,
>and brags or gets haughty about it. And why not? Are we not a poor
>country that had a per capita income of US$80 in the early sixties
>that has since achieved per capita national income of US$20,000?
>
>It would seem, however, that there are few Koreans who know that this
>country they are so proud of is the world’s 4th largest orphan
>exporter. This is because of a social atmosphere in which people ask
>what use there is knowing such things when you’re busy enough as it
>is trying to get ahead in life yourself. That, in turn, may be what
>makes being the 4th largest exporter of orphans more shameful than
>standing naked. Foreign media have begun criticizing this cruel
>apathy. “Now that Korea has become an economic powerhouse, it should
>stop sending adoptees overseas,” they say.
>
>Ahead of this criticism, in Seoul this summer some 600 overseas
>adoptees attended a conference of the International Korean Adoptee
>Associations (IKAA). Some among them held a protest calling for an
>end to Korea’s exportation of adoptees. In their various languages
>they said one thing. “You should be ashamed!”
>
>Something happened to me two years ago. Korea was the guest of honor
>at the 2002 at the Frankfurt Book Fair, and I was one of several
>Korean authors who participated in some of the events. During the
>course of the week we did public readings and newspaper interviews.
>One day I was interviewed by a Swedish literary critic. Somewhere in
>the course of the interview she asked what I thought about the fact
>that Korean adoptees are exported to other countries. I felt like I
>had been hit with a splash of hot water. I worked hard to hide my
>feelings of shame and embarrassment and to give a straight answer. It
>also happened to be something I have always thought a lot about.
>
>The Swede had a follow-up question. “What are you doing as an author
>to solve the problem?” This was how she was openly displaying her
>displeasure with my answer. If felt as miserable as could be, since
>as an author I had done nothing. I admitted that I had done nothing,
>and evaded the question saying I would do anything I could in the
>future. Two years have passed and I’ve done nothing to stop the
>export of orphans.
>
>The exportation of Korean orphans started immediately after the
>Korean War. More than 3 million people died in a war that lasted just
>three years, during which the country was bombed into a wasteland -
>imagine how many children were orphaned in the process! Those poor
>precious things had to be sent overseas instead of being forced to
>starve. It was a heartrending choice but the right one.
>
>However, it is wrong that this practice has continued through today.
>It should have stopped when we put the postwar poverty behind us and
>began to be able to sustain ourselves again, at about the point where
>we achieved a per capita national income of US$5,000. Or we should
>have ended it for sure when we surpassed the US$10,000 mark. Today we
>boast a per capita national income of US$20,000, but we’re still
>sending orphans to other countries.
>
>India has 800 million people and barely earns a per capita income of
>US$1,000, and it sends 320 orphans overseas yearly. Korea has 50
>million people and a per capita income of US$20,000 and yet in one
>year it sends 1,400 orphans overseas. Every Korean government has
>invited international embarrassment because of its carefree
>dereliction of duty, and how firmly have each of us closed our hearts
>while we all obsessed with our individual selves. Thirty years ago
>Japan earned the international nickname “economic animal.” What will
>Korea’s nickname be?
>
>Posted on : Sep.18,2007 09:46 KST
>
>http://en\
glish.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_opinion/237090.html

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