I am Korean and I was adopted.
I was born in Busan on a cold winter morning in 1984. On the day I was born, I was placed with a local Korean adoption agency. Within 5 months of my birth, I was on a plane with an Australian mother and arrived on new shores for a new Australian life and identity, far from the country I was born in and belonged to.
The story of what happened in those five months to make it possible for me to leave Korea with a foreigner who had never met me before was something that I hadn’t given thought to until I recently looked over the documents in my adoption file.
The mythology of my birth mother was that she loved me dearly and made the difficult choice to give me up so that I could have a better life. There was no curiosity expressed about who she was as a person, how she had come to be pregnant with me, who my extended family was or where we came from. The reality of my birth mother’s experience of giving up a tiny baby she'd carried and fed and the pain inherent to that experience was glossed over as a “difficult choice.” No inquiries were made about the conditions imposed on her and so many other young women at that time that took away their choice to keep their babies. She was a flash of light. And once extinguished she didn’t get the chance to appear in my dreams or imagination again for a very long time.
I had always assumed that the events following my birth were carried out legally, ethically and in the spirit of best interests - mine and my birth mother’s. But looking over those documents, understanding their function and the short lapses of time between each action made me question the motives of the adoption agency.
To understand my Korean history, all I have is those documents. The dates, the names, the changes to my legal status. I have no other information, so all I can go on is what they contain. They do tell a story. One with many gaps and one about which I still have many unanswered questions.
My hope with The Adoptables is to share what I have found out about my paperwork. Many of the documents that I have included here represent irrevocable legal changes to my status that were achieved with nothing more than a signature or stamp on a page. I wanted to create a record for all Korean adoptees, so we can understand the intentionally uncomplicated process that turned us all into parentless, adoptable babies and children. It was the ease of this process that facilitated the growth and dominance of South Korea’s international adoption industry for decades.
I am also interested in the processes that occurred in receiving countries, particularly in my case, Australia. Australia has a track record of acknowledging and apologising for past wrongdoings in adoption practice - The Stolen Generations of Indigenous children taken forcibly from their families and placed in white homes and the young pregnant women who were forced to give up their babies under coercion and duress placed on them by social welfare organisations. Our governments have carried out extensive inquiries to understand the conduct and its full impact on the victims. They have acknowledged in very specific terms, the horror that was inflicted. They have offered monetary compensation. There is open and transparent discussion of the impact of these actions on birth families. The conduct is known and has been named and condemned. Whether those acknowledgements are adequate to recompense the past is another question, but there have been tangible steps taken to do so.
It feels, however, like there is a double standard when it comes to international adoption. The same immoral and unethical conduct that induced women and families to give up their babies or illegal conduct which forcibly separated children from their families has occurred in many international adoptions to Australia. But somehow there is an invisible justification for that. We all feel it in a tiny corner in the pit of our stomachs - a life in a rich, white country with a middle class family is better than a life in a developing country, with a poor family. This is the narrative and the dichotomy that we’re all sold. But it is so much more complex and breaking down presumptions of what is “better” and what constitutes a good family warrants questioning. The treatment of our birth families and the ways we came to be procured by the adoption agencies also deserves probing and, in many cases, denouncement by the governments of our receiving countries, who claim to have been acting in our best interests.
We know that our stories are far more complex than being saved from poverty and being given a better life. We understand what we have gained through our adoptions and the great many things that we have lost.
I am still learning and processing my adoption and my relationship with Korea. I think I will continue to for the rest of my life. Thank you for reading and please get in touch if you have questions or comments or anything you would like to share.
