Overseas adoption: child welfare or abuse? The Korea Times, 12-30-2011 16:00
By Kim Do-hyun
Some years ago, during a seminar about overseas adoption from Korea, I stated that the practice is “child abuse rather than child welfare.” Some of the social workers who were working for overseas adoption agencies looked very shocked when they heard my presentation.
After the seminar, some of them came to me and made strong complaints and protested. They argued, “Why do you insult and disgrace us, while we try to find sweet homes for abandoned children through overseas adoption?”
Korea’s overseas adoption program started immediately after the end of the 1950-53 Korean War. Now Korea’s per capita national income is more than $20,000 and the economy ranks in the world’s top 15, yet Korea is still one of the world’s major countries sending its own children overseas for adoption.
According to government statistics, Korea has sent nearly 200,000 children overseas for adoption from 1953 to the present. Among those children, there were 5,546 mixed-race children sent from 1955 to 1973 (after which mixed-race children were no longer counted because the vast majority of adoptees were full-blooded Koreans), 98,178 children from unwed mothers, 28,823 children from broken families, 29,950 abandoned children and 37,216 disabled children. Continue reading
